No label defined (Q4947597)

This book contains twelve sections, two appendices and one note. As the author states in the preface, the aim of this book is to present some of fundamental notions of real algebras and its recent developments. Therefore the background of this book are commutative rings with identity, and some contents of real fields are treated as particular cases. In the first two sections, the basic notions, such as semi-real rings, real rings, ordering and preordering of a ring, are given. The section 3 provides further study of preordering for semi-real rings. In the section 4, the notion of real spectrum of a semi-real ring is introduced, using this concept, several abstract ``Stellensätze'' are established in the section 5, whereas concrete ``Stellensätze'' will be given in later sections. The section 6 deals with real places of a semi-real ring. The section 7 provides a construction of real place which generalizes the analogous facts in the field cases. Section 8 deals with real affine algebras. The section 9, devoted to semi-algebraic sets of real affine spaces, includes several real ``Stellensätze'', which reveal concrete aspects of the corresponding theorems. The last sections (10-12) treat some special real rings: real total quotient rings, real Prüfer rings and real holomorphy rings. -- Appendix A gives a concise introduction to Manis valuation for commutative rings. Appendix B introduces Prüfer rings and its basic properties. This small book seems to be a good text for an introductory course in real algebras at the gratuate level or for self-study.