Higher level orders on noncommutative rings (Q2640682)

\textit{E. Becker} [Hereditarily-Pythagorean fields and orderings of higher level (Rio de Janeiro, 1978; Zbl 0509.12020)] has introduced a generalization of the notion of an ordering of a field to that of an ordering of higher level of a field. This has been extended to division rings by \textit{T. C. Craven} [J. Algebra 77, 74-96 (1982; Zbl 0493.10026)] and the author [Math. Z. 198, 545-554 (1988; Zbl 0627.10014); J. Algebra 136, No.1, 51-59 (1991; Zbl 0715.12002)]. In the paper under review, the author now extends Becker's notion to arbitrary non-commutative rings. She proves that a ring that admits a preorder must also admit an order and obtains a generalization of the classical Artin-Schreier result for fields. Interalia, she proves that polynomial rings over ordered division rings have orders, whereas matrix rings over such division rings do not. She further studies rings which satisfy a very strong Ore condition. For arbitrary non-commutative rings she topologizes the set of all orders of level 1, X, and shows that X is compact and that the space of maximal orderings is Boolean.