On the Mostowski number (Q1117991)

A well-known theorem of Mostowski says that any two disjoint semialgebraic subsets of an n-dimensional real affine \({\mathbb{R}}\)-variety V may be separated by a function of a ring \({\mathbb{R}}[V][q_ 1,...,q_ m]\) with strictly positive elements \(q_ i\in {\mathbb{R}}[V]\). The paper investigates the question of whether there are upper and lower bounds, depending only on n and not on the sets or variety involved, on the number \(m=m(n)\) of square roots which need to be adjoined. It is shown that \(m(n)>n-2\). There exists also an upper bound depending on bounds on the number of inequalities needed to express closed semialgebraic sets.