Orderings, algebras and projective planes (Q1895658)

The theory of orderings on fields (or skew fields) is a well-developed area of mathematics. In the survey paper under review, the author demonstrates that many results of this theory extend to those algebraic structures which arise as coordinate domains of projective planes; these coordinate domains are called ternary fields. Skew fields or non- associative division algebras are very special cases of ternary fields. Complementing the monograph by \textit{S. Prieß-Crampe} [`Angeordnete Strukturen: Gruppen, Körper, projektive Ebenen', Springer (1983; Zbl 0558.51012)], the survey is focused on the development of the algebraic theory of ordered projective planes during the past decade. The halforderings of a projective plane belonging to a ternary field \(K\) correspond bijectively to the quadratic characters of the multiplicative loop \(K^*\) of \(K\) which are trivial on the radical \(R\) (in the sense of the author) of \(K\). The existence of an ordering can be characterized by an Artin-Schreier theorem. According to Prieß-Crampe, every projective plane with an Archimedean ordering has a completion which is a compact projective plane homeomorphic to the real projective plane; these topological projective planes have been studied by Salzmann and his school. Marshall's theory of spaces of orderings can be extended to ternary fields; often the resulting spaces are isomorphic to spaces of orderings of Pythagorean fields. The valuation-theoretic aspects are expressed in terms of places of ternary fields, which correspond to epimorphisms of projective planes. Local-global principles hold for ternary fields which contain the rationals as prime field. Most of these results are due to the author. This is a very readable survey of the algebraic theory of ordered projective planes.