Motivic equivalence of quadratic forms. II (Q1575056)

In this sequel to his article [Doc. Math., J. DMV 3, 341-351 (1998; Zbl 0957.11019)], the author constructs to each even \(n\geq 8\), \(n\neq 12\) examples of fields \(F\) of characteristic \(\neq 2\) and pairs of anisotropic \(n\)-dimensional nonsimilar quadratic forms \(\phi\) and \(\psi\) over \(F\) such that the Witt indices of the two forms over any field extension \(K\) of \(F\) coincide. By a theorem of Vishik, this latter property is the same as saying that the motives of the associated projective quadrics \(X_{\phi}\) and \(X_{\psi}\) are equivalent in the category of Chow motives. In his first paper on motivic equivalence, the author showed that for \(n\) odd or \(n\leq 7\), motivically equivalent forms are similar. The case \(n=12\) is still open. The proof uses a generalization of a result by the reviewer concerning the embeddability of quadratic forms in Pfister forms [Math. Z. 220, 461-476 (1995; Zbl 0840.11017)]. As a corollary of these results, it is shown that if \(\phi\) and \(\psi\) are anisotropic forms over \(F\) of dimension \(2^n+1\), then \(\phi\) becomes isotropic over \(F(X_{\psi})\) iff \(\psi\) becomes isotropic over \(F(X_{\phi})\). This result plays a crucial role in the author's construction of fields \(F\) with \(u\)-invariant \(9\).