On elementary equivalence, isomorphism and isogeny (Q2433576): Difference between revisions

It is well known in model theory that it is far from being true that elementary equivalence of two fields implies their isomorphism. But this question becomes interesting when restricting to certain classes of fields. For example, it follows from work by Duret and Pierce that if \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) are function fields of curves over an algebraically closed field, then either both are of genus one (with \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) isomorphic in many but not all cases), or both function fields are of genus \(\neq 1\) and isomorphic. Pop has shown that two elementarily equivalent fields that are finitely generated over an algebraically closed field (resp. their prime field) are of the same transcendence degree, from which one can conclude that elementarily equivalent function fields, one of them being of so-called general type, over an algebraically closed field, a number field or a finite field are always isomorphic (Corollary 4 in the present paper in the case of number fields and finite fields). Here, the author studies this question for function fields of quadrics and Severi-Brauer varieties. He introduces the notion of two fields \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) being (\(k\)-)isogenous, i.e. there exist field homomorphisms \(K_1\to K_2\) and \(K_2\to K_1\) (over a common base field \(k\)). In Theorem 7, he shows that function fields \(K_1\), \(K_2\) over some base field \(k\) of Severi-Brauer varieties of central simple \(k\)-algebras of the same degree and with cyclic division parts are isomorphic iff they are isogenous iff \(\text{Br}(K_1/k)=\text{Br}(K_2/k)\) holds for the Brauer kernels. For function fields \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) of \(n\)-dimensional quadrics (\(n\leq 2\)) over some field \(k\) of characteristic \(\neq 2\), he obtains the same results except for the condition on the Brauer kernels which has to be replaced by \(\text{Br}(lK_1/k)=\text{Br}(lK_2/k)\) for all quadratic extensions \(l/k\). If \(K_1\) is the function field over \(k\) (\(\text{char}(k)\neq 2\)) of an \(n\)-dimensional Severi-Brauer variety and \(K_2\) that of an \(n\)-dimensional quadric (\(n>1\)), then \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) are isomorphic iff they are isogenous iff they have the same Brauer kernels iff they are both rational function fields. He deduces (Corollary 8) that in all these situations, elementary equivalence implies isomorphism whenever \(k\) is algebraic over its prime field. In Theorem 10, he considers the case \(K=k(C)\) of a genus \(1\) curve \(C\) over a number field \(k\) and shows that under certain assumptions on the Jacobian \(J(C)\), any finitely generated field elementarily equivalent to \(K\) is actually isomorphic to \(K\).