Going up of the \(u\)-invariant over formally real fields (Q2373390)

Let \(F\) be a field of characteristic not 2. The author is interested in the behaviour of the \(u\)-invariant under finite extension \(K/F.\) It is said that \(u\) ``goes up'' a field extension \(K/F\) if finiteness of \(u(F)\) implies finiteness of \(u(K)\). \textit{R. Elman} and \textit{T. Y. Lam} [Math. Ann. 219, 21--42 (1976; Zbl 0302.10025)] proved that \(u\) ``goes up'' any finite extension of \(F\) if \(F\) is non-formally real. The main aim of the paper is to prove that \(u\) ''goes up'' any finite extension of a formally real field \(F\) if and only if the reduced stability \(\text{st}_r F\) of \(F\) is finite. It turns out that to make a success the most important is to control behaviour of \(u\) while going from \(F\) to \(F(\sqrt{-1}).\) The author defines an auxiliary invariant \(u_m(F)=\max\{\dim \varphi_{an}: |\text{sgn}_\alpha \varphi|\leq m, \alpha \in X_F, \varphi\in WF\},\) which with the help of detailed analysis of the space of orderings of a field with finite reduced stability gives the following theorem: If \(F\) is a formally real field with \(\text{st}_r F=n-1,\) then \(u(F(\sqrt{-1}))\leq \frac12u(F)+u_{2^n-1}(F).\) The main result follows from this theorem.