^*-Orderings on a ring with involution (Q4947072)

In this paper a ring is considered to contain an identity element, to have characteristic \(0\) and \(2\) as a unit, and with an involution \(*\). The notions of a Baer and a Jordan ordering on a skewfield are transferred to those on a ring as follows: Let \(A\) be a ring and \(P\) be a subset of the set \(S\) of all symmetric elements of \(A\) (\(r^*=r\)). The set \(P\) is said to be Baer ordering on \(A\) if the following properties are satisfied: (1) \(1\in P\), \(-1\not\in P\), (2) \(P+P\subseteq P\), (3) \(rPr^*\subseteq P\) for any \(r\in A\), (4) \(P\cup-P=S\), (5) for any \(a,b\in S\), \(aba\in P\cap-P\Rightarrow a\in P\cap-P\) or \(b\in P\cap-P\). If in addition we have (6) \(a,b\in P\Rightarrow ab+ba\in P\), then \(P\) is called a Jordan ordering. The author extends results about these orderings on a skewfield to a ring and investigates the notion of a valuation on these rings. Further denote by \(\text{Sper}_*(A)\) the set of all Jordan orderings of \(A\) and suppose \(\text{Sper}_*(A)\neq\emptyset\). Let \(\widetilde S\) be the smallest subset of \(A\) containing \(S\) and closed under multiplication and the unary operations \(a\mapsto rar^*\), \(r\in A\). For \(a\in\widetilde S\) a mapping \(\overline a\colon\text{Sper}_*(A)\to\{-1,0,1\}\) (called the sign of \(a\)) is defined by \[ \overline a(P)=\begin{cases} 1\quad &\text{if }a\in\widetilde P\setminus-\widetilde P\\ 0\quad &\text{if }a\in\widetilde P\cap-\widetilde P\\ -1\quad &\text{if }a\in-\widetilde P\setminus\widetilde P\end{cases}. \] Denote by \(G_*(A)\) the set \(\{\overline a:a\in\widetilde S\}=\{\overline a:a\in S\}\). In the conclusion (Section 7) of this article pairs \((X,G)\) are investigated, where \(X\) is a non-empty set and \(G\) a subset of \(\{-1,0,1\}^X\) with special properties ((1), (2), (3a), (3b)). This pair is then called a space of signs. Particularly it is proved that the pair \((\text{Sper}_*(A),G_*(A))\) is a space of signs.