Extensions of absolute values on two subfields (Q2667905)

The theory of absolute values is large subdomain of modern mathematics. One of the classical topics in this theory is the study of the set of absolute values on a field \(F\) which extend a prescribed absolute value on a subfield \(K\). In this paper, the authors study the absolute values on a field which simultaneously extend absolute values on two subfields. They apply their results to count points on the fibered product of two curve morphisms \(C\to X\) and \(D\to X\) which lie over prescribed points on \(C\) and \(D\). As the authors explain, this situation arises in many areas of mathematics, including complex dynamics, complex analysis, algebraic topology, number theory, functional equations, and coding theory. They give a general and abstract description of these absolute values, which appear to be useful in applications. In the preliminary section, the authors recall some standard facts about absolute values which will be used in this article. In the main section, the authors provide a common generalization of most variants of Abhyankar's lemma, which is a valuable tool with many applications.