Properties of fields (Q810587)

The authors study the category of fields and places. They show the rational numbers are the initial object in this category, and (1) every morphism can be factored (uniquely up to multiplication by a unit, i.e., an isomorphism) as a product of a surjective morphism and a ring homomorphism; (2) every ring homomorphism can be factored (uniquely up to multiplication by a unit) as a ring homomorphism and an integrally closed morphism; (3) every object has an essential ring homomorphism into an injective object and this is unique up to isomorphism. The authors concentrate on the transcendence degree of a field extension. They examine the structure of the group of automorphisms of an algebraically closed field and they show the perfect subfields correspond bijectively with certain groups.