Boolean products of real closed valuation rings and fields (Q5956886)

Real closed rings (i.e. totally ordered commutative domains satisfying the intermediate value property for polynomials) were studied in the eighties by Cherlin and Dickmann, who observed, among other things, that their theory has two possible completions: real closed fields and real closed valuation rings. Here the author develops a model-theoretic analysis of the Boolean products of these structures, mainly concerning elimination of quantifiers and elementary equivalence. The approach followed in the paper involves two new first-order notions -- divisible projectability and \(sc\)-regularity. In particular, the former concept seems very noteworthy; in fact, it allows to define within projectable reduced \(f\)-rings a two-variables function representing stalkwise the quotient of the arguments whenever it exists, and 0 otherwise. This is quite useful especially for quantifier elimination purposes. Indeed, the author gives a full characterization of the projectable divisible-projectable reduced \(f\)-rings admitting the elimination of quantifiers in the language of lattice-ordered rings with an additional symbol to be interpreted in the new function. This list includes real closed fields, products of two real closed fields, real closed valuation rings, products of two real closed valuation rings, von Neumann regular real closed rings without nonzero minimal idempotents, \(sc\)-regular real closed rings without nonzero minimal idempotents, and nothing else. Turning to the question of characterizing the complete theories of Boolean products, the author gives a (general) sufficient condition for the elementary equivalence of Boolean products of any theory with only finitely many completions, and, consequently, necessary and sufficient conditions for the elementary equivalence of divisible projectable Boolean products of real closed valuation rings and real closed fields in terms of the elementary equivalence types of their Boolean algebras of idempotents with a distinguished ideal encoding the stalks which are real closed valuation rings. The topological spaces \(X\) such that the ring \(C(X)\) of continuous functions from \(X\) to the reals is a Boolean product of real closed valuation rings and fields are characterized as well. Elementary equivalence and quantifier elimination are examined in this setting. Finally, rings of definable functions over ordered domains are dealt with. Elementary equivalence criteria are again deduced in this particular framework.