Difference algebra (Q2464628)

Difference algebra was born in the 1930s as a sibling of differential algebra. Both algebras grew out of the study of algebraic differential and difference equations with coefficients from functional fields in much the same way as the classical algebraic geometry arose from the study of polynomial equations with numerical coefficients. The rate of development of difference algebra after Ritt's pioneering works and works by F. Herzog, H. Raudenbuch and W. Strodt in the 1930s was much slower than that of its differential counterpart. The situation began to change in the 1950s due to R. Cohn, who not only raised the difference algebra to the level of its sibling, but also clarified why many fruitful ideas in differential algebra can not be successfully applied to difference algebra. Nowadays, difference algebra is a rich theory with its own methods very useful in the study of systems of equations in finite difference, functional equations, differential equations with delay, algebraic structures with operators, group and semigroup rings, etc. \textit{R. M. Cohn}'s work [Difference algebra. New York etc.: Interscience Publishers (1965; Zbl 0127.26402)] has hitherto remained the only fundamental monograph on difference algebra. Since it was published in the middle of the 1960s, it did not deal with partial difference algebra at all. Nowadays, it is due to efforts of I. Baraba, I. Bentsen, R. Cohn, P. Evanovich, A. Levin, A. Mikhalev, E. Pankrat'ev and some other mathematicians that partial difference algebra possesses a body of results considerably comparable to the main stream of ordinary difference algebra. This book gives a systematic study of both ordinary and partial difference algebraic structures and their applications. The book is almost self-contained, assuming familiarity only with basic ring-theoretic and group-theoretic concepts and elementary properties of rings, modules and fields. All more or less advanced results in ring theory, commutative algebra and combinatorics as well as the basic notation and conventions can be found in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 introduces the main objects of Difference Algebra and discusses their basic properties. Chapter 3 is concerned with properties of difference and inverse difference modules and their applications in the theory of linear difference equations. Difference versions of Hilbert and Hilbert-Samuel theorems on characteristic polynomials of graded and filtered modules. A generalization of the classical Gröbner basis techniques that allows one to compute multivariable difference dimension polynomials of difference and inverse difference modules is also presented. The theory of difference fields is discussed in Chapter 4, in which difference transcendence bases, the difference transcendence degree of a difference field extension, dimension polynomials associated with finitely generated difference and inverse difference field extensions and limit degree of a difference field extension are the main concepts and objects under investigation. Chapter 5 deals with the problems of compatibility, replicability and monadicity of difference field extensions as well as properties of difference specializations. The main results of this chapter are the fundamental compatibility and replicability theorems, the stepwise comparability condition for partial difference fields, Babbitt's decomposition theorem and its applications to the study of finitely generated pathological difference field extensions. Chapter 6 is devoted to the study of properties of difference kernels and their prolongations. One of the central results in Chapter 7 is R. Cohn's existence theorem claiming that every nontrivial ordinary algebraically irreducible difference polynomial has an abstract solution. Chapter 8 gives a review of difference Galois theory. The Galois correspondence for difference field extensions and related problems of compatibility and monadicity is considered in Section 1. The other two sections are devoted to the review of the classical Picard-Vessiot theory of linear homogeneous difference equations and some results on Picard-Vessiot rings. The Galois theory of difference equation based on Picard-Vessiot rings is relegated completely to \textit{M. van der Put} and \textit{M. Singer}'s monograph [Galois theory of difference equations. Lecture Notes in Mathematics. 1666. Berlin: Springer (1997; Zbl 0930.12006)]. The book will become a good reference for researchers in the area of difference algebra and algebraic structures with operators.