Witt rings of weakly orderable double loops and nearfields (Q914733)

The author develops Marshall's theory of spaces of orderings and abstract Witt rings for left-planar double loops and later on specializes these results to weakly orderable nearfields. (D,\(+,\cdot)\) is called a double loop \(\Leftrightarrow\) (1) \((D,+)\) loop with neutral element 0; (2) \((D^*,\cdot)\) loop, where \(D^*=D\setminus \{0\}\); (3) \(d\cdot 0=0\cdot d=0\) for all \(d\in D\). If in addition (4) for all d,m,n\(\in D\), \(m\neq n\) there exists a unique \(x\in D\) such that \(xm+d=xn\), then D is called a left-planar double loop. In part 1 he introduces weak orderings, weak preorderings and weak positive cones of left-planar loops. The subloop \(Q_ W(D)\) of \(D^*\) is generated by all elements of \(D^*\) expressible as products in which each factor occurs even times, and by all elements of the form \[ ((a+c)- (b+c))/(a-b),\quad ((c+a)-(c+b))/(a-b),\quad ((ca-cb))/(c(a-b)) \] with a,b,c\(\in D\), \(a\neq b\), \(c\neq 0\). \(Q_ W(D)\) plays the same role for weakly ordered double loops as squares do for ordered fields. Then fundamental properties of orderings in fields carry over to this setting, i.e. the connection between weak orderings, weak positive cones and the signature function. As a main result of part 1 the author obtains the Artin-Schreier characterization (Theorem 1.8) of a weakly orderable double loop. In section 2 the author translates Marshall's theory of abstract forms into the setting of weakly orderable left-planar double loops. For a weak preordering S the set X/S of all weak positive cones extending S can be viewed as a subset of the character group of \(D^*/S\). Then \((X/S,D^*/S)\) is a space of orderings in the sense of Marshall (Theorem 2.3). Moreover, the Representation Criterion and Chain Equivalence hold. In section 3 the author applies the theory developed above to not necessarily planar nearfields. Again, he gives the Artin-Schreier characterization of weakly orderable nearfields and shows that the set of all weak orderings of a weakly orderable nearfield forms a space of orderings.