Annihilating polynomials of excellent quadratic forms (Q2481717)

A quadratic form \(\varphi\) is said to be excellent if there exists a sequence of forms \(\varphi, \varphi_1, \ldots, \varphi_h\) such that \(\varphi_{i-1}\) is a Pfister neighbor with complement \(\varphi_i\) and \(\varphi_h\) has dimension \(\leq 1\). The author proves that for \(n_i = \dim \varphi_i\) the polynomial \(X(X^2-n_{h-1}^2) \cdots (X^2-n_1)(X^2-n^2)\) annihilates \(\varphi\) when the dimension \(n\) of \(\varphi\) is even, and a similar annihilating polynomial is found for \(n\) odd.