Isotropy and Factorization in Reduced Witt Rings

Witt rings of quadratically presentable fields

This paper introduces an approach to the axiomatic theory of quadratic forms based on {tmem{presentable}} partially ordered sets, that is partially ordered sets subject to additional conditions which amount to a strong form of local presentability. It turns out that the classical notion of the Witt ring of symmetric bilinear forms over a field makes sense in the context of {tmem{quadratically p...

Inert Module Extensions, Multiplicatively Closed Subsets Conserving Cyclic Submodules and Factorization in Modules

Introduction Suppose that  is a commutative ring with identity,  is a unitary -module and  is a multiplicatively closed subset of .  Factorization theory in commutative rings, which has a long history, still gets the attention of many researchers. Although at first, the focus of this theory was factorization properties of elements in integral domains, in the late nineties the theory was gener...

The Reduced Witt Ring of a Formally

The reduced Witt rings of certain formally real fields are computed here in terms of some basic arithmetic invariants of the fields. For some fields, including the rational function field in one variable over the rational numbers and the rational function field in two variables over the real numbers, this is done by computing the image of the total signature map on the Witt ring. For a wider cl...

Characterizing Reduced Witt Rings of Fields

Let IV(F) denote the Mitt ring of nondegenerate symmetric bilinear forms over a field F. In this paper wc shall be concerned only with formally real fields, for which we write Wr,,l(F) ~mm W(F)/Wil W(F) for the reduced R’itt ring. In [13, 141 the rings W(F) and iTred are shown to be special cases of absfrart lWtt rirqs and a great deal of the ring structure is developed in this setting. In [6] ...

Characterizing Reduced Witt Rings Ii