Some criteria for stably birational equivalence of quadratic forms (Q2099281)

Let \(p\) and \(q\) be nondegenerate quadratic forms over a field \(F\) of characteristic not two. As it is well known, the associated projective quadrics \(X_{p}\) and \(X_{q}\) are stably birationally equivalent if and only if the following holds: \((\ast)\) the quadratic form \(p\) is isotropic over the function field \(F(q)\) of \(X_{q}\) and the quadratic form \(q\) is isotropic over the function field \(F(p)\) of \(X_{p}\). Without mentioning this geometric background the paper under review defines the quadratic forms \(p\) and \(q\) to be stably birationally equivalent if the algebraic condition \((\ast)\) holds. The paper then proves several algebraic criteria for stable birational equivalence of quadratic forms, improving as well as reproving known results. For instance, it is shown that the quadratic forms \(p\) and \(q\) are stably birationally equivalent if and only if \[ D_{F}(p)\cdot D_{F}(p)\, =\, D_{F}(q)\cdot D_{F}(q) \] as subsets of the multiplicative group \(F^{\times}\) of \(F\), where \(D_{F}(\varphi)\) denotes the set of non zero values of a quadratic form \(\varphi\) over \(F\).