Divided powers in the Witt ring of symmetric bilinear forms (Q6156900): Difference between revisions

In his paper [Pac. J. Math. 127, No. 1, 127--140 (1987; Zbl 0638.10012)] \textit{M. Marshall} has defined devided power operations \(\gamma_{n}\), \(n\in\mathbb{N}\cup\{ 0\}\), for abstract Witt rings, and so in particular for Witt rings of symmetric bilinear forms over a field. The aim of the paper by B. Totaro is to give a new construction and formula for these operations on Witt rings of fields. Let \(F\) be a field (of any characteristic) and \(\mathrm{I}(F)_{(2)}\) the fundamental ideal of the Witt ring of symmetric bilinear forms over \(F\) localized at the prime ideal generated by \(2\), i.e. all odd primes are inverted. (Note that the fundamental ideal \(\mathrm{I}(F)\) embeds into \(\mathrm{I}(F)_{(2)}\) as there is no odd torsion in the Witt ring.) The paper proves that setting \(\gamma_{2}(x):=\lambda^{2}(x)\) for \(x\in\mathrm{I}(F)_{(2)}\), where \(\lambda^{i}\) denotes the \(i\)th exterior power, induces a divided power operation on \(\mathrm{I} (F)_{(2)}\), which satisfies the formula \[ \gamma_{n}(x)\, =\,\sum\limits_{i\geq 0}(-1)^{\frac{n-i}{2}}\frac{i!}{n!}T(n,i)\lambda^{i}(x). \] Here the number \(T(n,i)\) is defined by the formula \(\frac{(\tan t)^{i}}{i!}=\sum\limits_{l\geq i}\frac{T(l,i)t^{l}}{l!}\) (called ``tangent numbers'' in the article). It is then shown that this induces a divided power operation on the fundamental ideal \(\mathrm{I}(F)\) if \(-1\) is a square in \(F\). Moreover, in this case the divided power operations are then compatible with the ones on the Milnor \(K\)-theory modulo \(2\) of the field \(F\).