On the Witt-equivalence of fields of characteristic 2 (Q801960): Difference between revisions

Till now the Witt equivalence has been considered only in the case of characteristic not two. It is known that two fields E and F have isomorphic Witt rings if and only if there exists a group isomorphism \(E^{\times}/E^{\times^ 2}\to F^{\times}/F^{\times^ 2}\) which preserves the sets of elements represented by binary forms [cf. \textit{C. M. Cordes}, J. Algebra 26, 400-421 (1973; Zbl 0288.12101)]. It turns out that this is also true in the case of characteristic two. The author proves that the result can be made much stronger. The clue to obtain it is the observation that a field E of characteristic 2 can be considered as a vector space over the field \(E^ 2\) and the group \(E^{\times}/E^{\times^ 2}\) can be identified with the projective space \({\mathbb{P}}(E)\) of E over \(E^ 2\). Then the application of the fundamental theorem of projective geometry gives us the result: if E and F are fields of characteristic 2 and \(\dim_{E^ 2} E=\dim_{F^ 2} F>2\), then the fields E and F have isomorphic Witt rings if and only if they are isomorphic.