Independence of continued fractions in the field of Laurent series (Q955162)

Let \(F(x)\) be the field of rational functions over a field \(F\) endowed with the degree valuation \(| \cdot| \) and let \({\mathbb F}=F((x^{-1}))\) be the completion of \(F(x)\) with respect to this valuation. If \(\xi\) is a non-zero element of \({\mathbb F}\), then writing it in the form \(\xi=[\xi]+(\xi)\) where \([\xi]\) is a polynomial over \(F\), say \(\beta_0\), and \((\xi)\) the principal part of \(\xi\), we can start the continued fraction expansion process writing \(\xi=\beta_0+{1\over \xi_1}\), where \(\xi_1^{-1}=(\xi)\) with \(| \xi_1| >1\) provided \((\xi)\neq0\). The authors prove criteria for algebraic independence of finite sets \(\alpha_1,\dots,\alpha_n\) and for linear independence of sets \(1,\alpha_1,\dots,\alpha_n\) over \(F(x)\) of elements of \({\mathbb F}\) in terms of their continued fractions expansions. One section of the paper is devoted to the problem of linear independence of quadratic irrationals, and one to the independence of types of elements with known explicit series and continued fraction expansions.