Harrison's criterion, Witt equivalence and reciprocity equivalence (Q731993)

Harrison's criterion gives a necessary and sufficient condition for the isomorphism of Witt rings of quadratic forms of two fields expressed in terms of the behavior of the binary quadratic forms over the two fields, or equivalently, in terms of the behavior of 2-fold Pfister forms. The paper under review generalizes the criterion to the context of Witt groups of hermitian forms over certain algebras with involution. In the first part of the paper the author considers the case of quadratic extensions of fields of characteristic different from 2 with the nontrivial automorphism. Then the Witt groups of hermitian forms have a natural ring structure and the criterion for the isomorphism of the Witt rings is expressed in terms of 3-fold Pfister forms over the ground field. Also the case of quaternion algebras with their canonical involution is considered and the criterion is expressed in terms of certain 4-fold Pfister forms over the ground field. The second part of the paper discusses the case of quadratic extensions of global fields equipped with their nontrivial automorphisms. Again the Witt groups of hermitian forms have the ring structure and it is shown that they are isomorphic as rings if and only if there is a suitably defined generalized quadratic reciprocity equivalence between the ground fields. Quadratic reciprocity equivalence between two global fields was introduced by \textit{R. Perlis, K. Szymiczek, P. E. Conner} and \textit{R. Litherland} [Contemp. Math. 155, 365--387 (1994; Zbl 0807.11024)]. It was shown there that Witt rings of quadratic forms of two global fields are isomorphic if and only if there exists a reciprocity equivalence between them.