Extending valuations to the field of rational functions using pseudo-monotone sequences (Q2049394)

Let \((K,v)\) be a valued field with valuation domain \(V=\{a\in K\mid v(a)\geq 0\}\) and value group \(\Gamma_v\). Moreover, let \(\overline{K}\) be a fixed algebraic closure of \(K\) and let \(\widehat{K}\) be the completion of \(K\) with respect to the topology induced by \(v\). This paper is motivated by the following task: classify all extensions of \(V\) to the field of rational functions \(K(X)\). In case that \(V\) has rank one (i.e.\ \(\Gamma_v\) is archimedean or, equivalently, can be embedded as an ordered group into \((\mathbb{R},+,0,<)\)) Ostrowski's Fundamentalsatz (see [\textit{A. Ostrowski}, Math. Z. 39, 269--404 (1934; Zbl 0010.15001)]) presents a characterisation of rank one extensions of \(V\) to \(K(X)\) by means of pseudo-convergent sequences in \(\overline{K}\). This paper is mainly concerned with a generalisation of Ostrowski's Fundamentalsatz to the case that \(V\) or its extension to \(K(X)\) is not of rank one. Let \(\Lambda\) be an ordinal number. Then a sequence \(E=\{s_{\nu}\}_{\nu\in \Lambda}\subset K\) is called a pseudo-monotone sequence if one of the following conditions is satisfied: \begin{itemize} \item pseudo-convergence: \(v(s_\rho-s_\nu)<v(s_\sigma -s_\rho)\) for any \(\nu<\rho<\sigma\in \Lambda\); \item pseudo-divergence: \(v(s_\rho-s_\nu)>v(s_\sigma -s_\rho)\) for any \(\nu<\rho<\sigma\in \Lambda\); \item pseudo-stationarity: \(v(s_\nu-s_\mu)=v(s_{\nu'}-s_{\mu'})\) for any \(\nu,\nu',\mu,\mu'\in \Lambda\) with \(\nu\neq \mu\) and \(\nu'\neq \mu'\). \end{itemize} For any pseudo-monotone sequence \(E=\{s_{\nu}\}_{\nu\in \Lambda}\subset K\) the set \[ V_E=\{\phi\in K(X)\mid \phi(s_\nu)\in V\text{ for all sufficiently large }\nu\in \Lambda\} \] defines a valuation domain of \(K(X)\) (see Theorem~3.4). The main result of this paper (Theorem~6.2) shows the following: every extension \(W\) of \(V\) to \(K(X)\) is of the form \(W=V_E\) for some pseudo-monotone sequence \(E\subset K\) if and only if \(\widehat{K}\) is algebraically closed. Moreover, in this case \(E\) can be specified to satisfy certain conditions (such as being of transcendental type or of algebraic type, or being pseudo-convergent, pseudo-divergent or pseudo-stationary) depending on whether \(V\subset W\) is immediate or not. In the non-immediate case, a further case distinction is made depending on properties of the sets \(\mathcal{L}_1(W)\), \(\mathcal{L}_2(W)\) and \(\mathcal{L}(W)\) (see Definition~4.1), which are analogues of the set of pseudo-limits. In Theorem~7.4, the authors obtain a ``modern proof of Ostrowski's Fundamentalsatz'' derived from their main result Theorem~6.2.