Graded Hermitian forms and Springer's theorem (Q2381841)

A classical Springer's theorem yields an isomorphism between the Witt group \(W(F)\) of a complete discretely valued field \(F\) and a direct sum of two copies of the Witt group \(W(\overline{F})\) of the residue field \(\overline{F}\), provided \(\text{char}(\overline{F})\neq 2\). Springer's theorem has many generalizations. \textit{D. W. Larmour} [Math. Z. 252, 459--472 (2006; Zbl 1103.11013)] proved an analogue of this theorem for the Witt group of Hermitian forms over division algebras with involution over a field with Henselian valuation with the residue characteristic not 2. The authors of the paper under review give another approach to Larmour's result in terms of graded structures arising from the filtration determined by the valuations. Let \(D\) be a division ring finite-dimensional over its center \(K=Z(D)\) and equipped with a valuation \(v: D\longrightarrow \Gamma\). The associated graded ring of \(D\) is \(\text{gr}(D)=\bigoplus_{\gamma\in\Gamma} D_\gamma,\) where \(D_\gamma = \{d\in D: v(d)\geq \gamma\}/\{d\in D: v(d)> \gamma\}\) with the multiplication induced by the multiplication in \(D\). Suppose that \(\tau\) is an involution on \(D\) and \(\lambda\in K\) such that \(\lambda\tau(\lambda)=1\). The main result of the paper asserts that if the characteristic of the residue skew field \(D_0=\overline{D}\) of \(v\) is not 2 and \(v\) is Henselian, then there is an isomorphism between the Witt group \(W^+(D,\tau,\lambda)\) of even \(\lambda\)-Hermitian forms over \(D\) and the graded Witt group \(W^+_g(\text{gr}(D),\tau',\lambda')\), where \(\lambda'\) is the image of \(\lambda\) in \(D_0\) and \(\tau'\) is an involution on \(\text{gr}(D)\) induced by \(\tau\). As the authors show this result is also valid in some special cases when \(\text{char}(D_0)=2\). Besides this main result the paper contains a thorough account on Hermitian forms over division rings with valuation.