Approximate roots of a valuation and the Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture

DOI10.5802/AFST.1336MaRDI QIDQ439219zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors M. Spivakovsky, F. Lucas, J. Madden, D. Schaub

Publication date 1 August 2012

Published in Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de Toulouse. Mathématiques. Série VI (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.1188

zbMATH Keywords

approximate root connectedness conjecture Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture regular local ring valuation

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Valuations and their generalizations for commutative rings (13A18) Real algebra (13J30)

Abstract: This paper is a step in our program for proving the Piece-Birkhoff Conjecture for regular rings of any dimension (this would contain, in particular, the classical Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture which deals with polynomial rings over a real closed field). We first recall the Connectedness and the Definable Connectedness conjectures, both of which imply the Pierce - Birkhoff conjecture. Then we introduce the notion of a system of approximate roots of a valuation v on a ring A (that is, a collection Q of elements of A such that every v-ideal is generated by products of elements of Q). We use approximate roots to give explicit formulae for sets in the real spectrum of A which we strongly believe to satisfy the conclusion of the Definable Connectedness conjecture. We prove this claim in the special case of dimension 2. This proves the Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture for arbitrary regular 2-dimensional rings.

Review text

This paper is concerned with the Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture: any piecewise-polynomial function can be expressed as a maximum of finite minima of finite collections of polynomials. The Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture was proved by \textit{L. Mahé} in 1984 for \(n\leq2\) [Rocky Mt. J. Math. 14, 983--985 (1984; Zbl 0578.41008)] but is still open for \(n>2\).NEWLINENEWLINEIn the article under review the authors continue their quest for a real algebro-geometric proof of the conjecture via their Connectedness conjecture from [\textit{F. Lucas, J. J. Madden, D. Schaub} and \textit{M. Spivakovsky}, Manuscr. Math. 128, No. 4, 505--547 (2009; Zbl 1169.14039)]. As the main tool they use approximate roots of a regular local ring \((A,{\mathbf m})\) equipped with a valuation centered in \({\mathbf m}\). They establish a definable connectedness conjecture for \(\dim A=2\), leading to a new proof of the Mahé theorem cited above.

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