Quadratic Forms Over Semilocal Rings PDF Download

Author: R. Baeza
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3540358161
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Author: Max-Albert Knus
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642754015
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
From its birth (in Babylon?) till 1936 the theory of quadratic forms dealt almost exclusively with forms over the real field, the complex field or the ring of integers. Only as late as 1937 were the foundations of a theory over an arbitrary field laid. This was in a famous paper by Ernst Witt. Still too early, apparently, because it took another 25 years for the ideas of Witt to be pursued, notably by Albrecht Pfister, and expanded into a full branch of algebra. Around 1960 the development of algebraic topology and algebraic K-theory led to the study of quadratic forms over commutative rings and hermitian forms over rings with involutions. Not surprisingly, in this more general setting, algebraic K-theory plays the role that linear algebra plays in the case of fields. This book exposes the theory of quadratic and hermitian forms over rings in a very general setting. It avoids, as far as possible, any restriction on the characteristic and takes full advantage of the functorial aspects of the theory. The advantage of doing so is not only aesthetical: on the one hand, some classical proofs gain in simplicity and transparency, the most notable examples being the results on low-dimensional spinor groups; on the other hand new results are obtained, which went unnoticed even for fields, as in the case of involutions on 16-dimensional central simple algebras. The first chapter gives an introduction to the basic definitions and properties of hermitian forms which are used throughout the book.

Author: Kenneth I. Mandelberg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Algebra, Homological
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Author: W. Scharlau
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642699715
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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For a long time - at least from Fermat to Minkowski - the theory of quadratic forms was a part of number theory. Much of the best work of the great number theorists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century was concerned with problems about quadratic forms. On the basis of their work, Minkowski, Siegel, Hasse, Eichler and many others crea ted the impressive "arithmetic" theory of quadratic forms, which has been the object of the well-known books by Bachmann (1898/1923), Eichler (1952), and O'Meara (1963). Parallel to this development the ideas of abstract algebra and abstract linear algebra introduced by Dedekind, Frobenius, E. Noether and Artin led to today's structural mathematics with its emphasis on classification problems and general structure theorems. On the basis of both - the number theory of quadratic forms and the ideas of modern algebra - Witt opened, in 1937, a new chapter in the theory of quadratic forms. His most fruitful idea was to consider not single "individual" quadratic forms but rather the entity of all forms over a fixed ground field and to construct from this an algebra ic object. This object - the Witt ring - then became the principal object of the entire theory. Thirty years later Pfister demonstrated the significance of this approach by his celebrated structure theorems.

Author: Tsit-Yuen Lam
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821810952
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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This new version of the author's prizewinning book, Algebraic Theory of Quadratic Forms (W. A. Benjamin, Inc., 1973), gives a modern and self-contained introduction to the theory of quadratic forms over fields of characteristic different from two. Starting with few prerequisites beyond linear algebra, the author charts an expert course from Witt's classical theory of quadratic forms, quaternion and Clifford algebras, Artin-Schreier theory of formally real fields, and structural theorems on Witt rings, to the theory of Pfister forms, function fields, and field invariants. These main developments are seamlessly interwoven with excursions into Brauer-Wall groups, local and global fields, trace forms, Galois theory, and elementary algebraic K-theory, to create a uniquely original treatment of quadratic form theory over fields. Two new chapters totaling more than 100 pages have been added to the earlier incarnation of this book to take into account some of the newer results and more recent viewpoints in the area. As is characteristic of this author's expository style, the presentation of the main material in this book is interspersed with a copious number of carefully chosen examples to illustrate the general theory. This feature, together with a rich stock of some 280 exercises for the thirteen chapters, greatly enhances the pedagogical value of this book, both as a graduate text and as a reference work for researchers in algebra, number theory, algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, and geometric topology.

Author: McMaster University
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 9780821860083
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Contains the proceedings of the 1983 Seminar on Quadratic and Hermitian Forms held at McMaster University, July 1983. Between 1945 and 1965, most of the work in quadratic (and hermitian) forms took place in arithmetic theory (M Eichler, M Kneser, O T O'Meara).

Author: Tsit-Yuen Lam
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821807021
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Presents an introduction to ordered fields and reduced quadratic forms using valuation-theoretic techniques. This book describes the techniques of residue forms and the relevant Springer theory.

Author: Bill Jacob
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821803409
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Volume 2 of two - also available in a set of both volumes.

Author: Richard S. Elman
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 9780821873229
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
This book is a comprehensive study of the algebraic theory of quadratic forms, from classical theory to recent developments, including results and proofs that have never been published. The book is written from the viewpoint of algebraic geometry and includes the theory of quadratic forms over fields of characteristic two, with proofs that are characteristic independent whenever possible. For some results both classical and geometric proofs are given. Part I includes classical algebraic theory of quadratic and bilinear forms and answers many questions that have been raised in the early stages of the development of the theory. Assuming only a basic course in algebraic geometry, Part II presents the necessary additional topics from algebraic geometry including the theory of Chow groups, Chow motives, and Steenrod operations. These topics are used in Part III to develop a modern geometric theory of quadratic forms.

Author: E. Grosswald
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461385660
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
During the academic year 1980-1981 I was teaching at the Technion-the Israeli Institute of Technology-in Haifa. The audience was small, but con sisted of particularly gifted and eager listeners; unfortunately, their back ground varied widely. What could one offer such an audience, so as to do justice to all of them? I decided to discuss representations of natural integers as sums of squares, starting on the most elementary level, but with the inten tion of pushing ahead as far as possible in some of the different directions that offered themselves (quadratic forms, theory of genera, generalizations and modern developments, etc.), according to the interests of the audience. A few weeks after the start of the academic year I received a letter from Professor Gian-Carlo Rota, with the suggestion that I submit a manuscript for the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences under his editorship. I answered that I did not have a ready manuscript to offer, but that I could use my notes on representations of integers by sums of squares as the basis for one. Indeed, about that time I had already started thinking about the possibility of such a book and had, in fact, quite precise ideas about the kind of book I wanted it to be.