On the \(u\)-invariant for quadratic forms and the linkage of cyclic algebras (Q1320989)

In characteristic 2 there are two possible \(u\)-invariants for quadratic forms. One has \(u(F):=\) the maximum dimension of anisotropic nonsingular quadratic forms over \(F\), and \(\widehat{u}(F):=\) the maximum dimension of anisotropic quadratic forms over \(F\). In this paper it is shown that both the \(u\)-invariant and the \(\widehat{u}\)-invariant can grow under purely inseparable quadratic extensions. The growth of the \(u\)-invariant under separable extensions was studied by \textit{D. Leep} and \textit{A. S. Merkurjev} [Ragsquad Proceedings, Contemp. Math. (to appear)], but since his process depends heavily upon the corestriction, different techniques have to be used in the inseparable case. In addition to the growth of the \(u\)-invariant in characteristic 2 some closely related questions involving the linkage number for cyclic \(p\)-algebras is also studied.