Strongly étale difference algebras and Babbitt's decomposition (Q1644828)

According to \textit{A. E. Babbitt jun.} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 102, 63--81 (1962; Zbl 0104.03601)], \emph{pathological} (that is either \emph{incompatible} or \emph{monadic}) extensions of a difference field are sources of difficulties in trying to build a Difference Galois Theory as convenient as the classical Galois theory of algebraic extensions. In [loc. cit.], he stated and proved an important structure theorem for normal extensions. However, this applies only to \emph{inversive} difference fields \((K,\sigma)\), \emph{i.e.} those such that the structural isomorphism \(\sigma\) is bijective. In the paper under review the authors (following numerous other works of themselves and others) bring one more tool to a difference Galois theory where this hypothesis is relaxed. To that aim, they introduce ``strongly étale algebras'' (originally intended to provide a notion of connexity in difference algebraic geometry) and replace the \emph{core} used by Babbitt by a ``strong core''. They proceed to prove functorial and tensorial properties of the latter and to apply them to difference Galois theory.