Minimal weakly isotropic forms (Q2580981)

In the article weakly isotropic quadratic forms over formally real fields are studied. The concept of weak isotropy was introduced by \textit{A. Prestel} [Math. Z. 133, 319--342 (1973; Zbl 0275.12013)] and was also studied by \textit{L. Bröcker} [Math. Ann. 210, 233--256 (1974; Zbl 0273.13018)]. A quadratic form \(\varphi\) over field \(F\) (of characteristic different from 2) is said to be weakly isotropic if there is an integer \(m>0\) such that \(m\times \varphi\) is isotropic. We say that the form \(\varphi\) is strongly anisotropic if it is not weakly isotropic. The author investigates weakly isotropic forms with regard to the question of what kind of subforms and orthogonal decompositions they admit. This leads him to consider so called minimal weakly forms, which are weakly isotropic forms that do not contain any proper weakly isotropic subform. For a field \(F\) the author considers the supremum of the set of dimensions of all minimal weakly isotopic forms over the field \(F\) and compares it with other invariants and properties of the field related to quadratic form theory. Moreover, in the paper, fields over which every quadratic form can be decomposed into an orthogonal sum of strongly anisotropic form and a torsion form are characterized in different ways.