Valuations and higher level orders in commutative rings (Q1891489)

This paper deals with the following question: Do the connections that exist between valuations and higher level orders of fields still do so in commutative rings? The author uses valuation theory to study the space of orders and the reduced Witt ring relative to higher level preorders in commutative rings and finds out that many notions, methods and results for fields carry over to this setting. Let \(R\) be with 1. Part I contains many basic definitions and basic facts regarding valuations, Manis valuations, valuation pairs, higher level preorders and orders, and Prüfer rings. Part 2 is devoted to compatibility, a key notion in the study of higher level orders and forms. Here a valuation \(v= (q, \widehat A)\) with valuation pair \((A, I)\) is called compatible with an order \(P\) iff \(P\cap- P\subset q\) and \(P\cap (A\backslash I)+ I\subset P\). In Parts 3 and 4 all valuations have to be Manis valuations. Two valuations \(v_1\), \(v_2\) are called dependent iff there exists a non-trivial solution \(v\) that is coarser than both, otherwise they are called independent. Let \(O_T= \{P\) ordering/\(T\subset P\}\). Dependency, denoted by \(\sim\), is defined on \(O_T\) via the valuations \(v_p\) and \(v_Q\) for \(Q\in O_T\) non-Archimedean. Dependency is an equivalence relation on \(O_T\) and allows the author to ``break up'' \(T\) into pieces that are fully compatible with a valuation (Theorem 3.7). Finally, in Part 4, the author gets some results on \(T\)-forms and the reduced Witt ring and especially proves that \((X_T, R^*/T^*)\) is a space of signatures if there are only finitely many valuations among \(\{vp/P\in O_T\}\) and only finitely many Archimedean orders on \(R\) (Theorem 4.8).