On the Krull dimension of rings of continuous semialgebraic functions (Q888918)

Summary: Let \(R\) be a real closed field, \({\mathcal S}(M)\) the ring of continuous semialgebraic functions on a semialgebraic set \(M\subset R^m\) and \({\mathcal S}^*(M)\) its subring of continuous semialgebraic functions that are bounded with respect to \(R\). In this work we introduce \textit{semialgebraic pseudo-compactifications} of \(M\) and the \textit{semi algebraic depth} of a prime ideal \(\mathfrak p\) of \({\mathcal S}(M)\) in order to provide an elementary proof of the finiteness of the Krull dimensions of the rings \({\mathcal S}(M)\) and \({\mathcal S}^*(M)\) for an arbitrary semialgebraic set \(M\). We are inspired by the classical way to compute the dimension of the ring of polynomial functions on a complex algebraic set without involving the sophisticated machinery of real spectra. We show \(\dim({\mathcal S}(M))=\dim({\mathcal S}^*(M))=\dim(M)\) and prove that in both cases the height of a maximal ideal corresponding to a point \(p \in M\) coincides with the local dimension of \(M\) at \(p\). In case \(\mathfrak p\) is a prime \(z\)-\textit{ideal} of \({\mathcal S}(M)\), its semialgebraic depth coincides with the transcendence degree of the real closed field \(\mathrm {qf}({\mathcal S}(M)/\mathfrak p)\) over \(R\).