Sums of mixed powers in fields and orderings of prescribed level (Q1202202)

Let \(K\) be a formally real field. In the first part of this paper the author finds arithmetic conditions under which \(K\) has an ordering of level \(n\), for any natural number \(n\). He uses a valuation theoretic approach and obtains a crucial equivalency in Theorem 1.2: For a subset \({\mathcal L}\) of \(\mathbb{N}\) and a family \((\alpha_ n)_{n\in{\mathcal L}}\subset \sum K^{*2}\) there is \(1\not\in\sum\sum \alpha_ n K^{*2n} \Leftrightarrow K\) admits a real valuation \(v\) such that \(v(\alpha_ n)\not\in 2n\Gamma_ v\) for every \(n\in {\mathcal L}\). As a first consequence he gets a characterization of sums of mixed powers of fields. As a second consequence he obtains a characterization of those fields which admit an ordering of given level \(n\). Moreover, he gives a few results on the relation between orderings of higher level and total orders. He introduces the notion of an order fan and a valuation fan and studies the relationship between order fans and orderings of higher level. Finally, he proves a few results on chain signatures. The second part of this paper is devoted to the characterization of sums of mixed powers in fields by using orderings of higher level. Therefore, the author introduces so called chain modules. The following Theorem (2.7) generalizes a result of \textit{E. Becker} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 307/308, 8-30 (1979; Zbl 0398.12012)] and is one of the main results of this paper. For a field \(K\) and a set of natural numbers \({\mathcal L}\) we have \(\sum_{\mathcal L} \sum K^{*2n}=\cap M\), where \(M\) ranges over all chain modules of degree \({\mathcal L}\). Then the author looks at the relationship between chain modules and order fans and describes the maximal preorderings \(P\subset M\) of a chain module \(M\). He concludes his paper with the proof of an identity for sums of mixed powers (Theorem 2.19) which generalizes Becker's results in the case of sums of \(2n\)th powers (loc. cit.). As a consequence of this, he obtains ``Hilbert identities'' for sums of mixed powers.