Supertropical quadratic forms. I.

Abstract: We initiate the theory of a quadratic form

q

over a semiring

R

. As customary, one can write

q(x+y) = q(x) + q(y)+ b(x,y),

where

b

is a companion bilinear form. But in contrast to the ring-theoretic case, the companion bilinear form need not be uniquely defined. Nevertheless,

q

can always be written as a sum of quadratic forms

q = k a p p a + h o,

where

k a p p a

is quasilinear in the sense that

k a p p a (x + y) = k a p p a (x) + k a p p a (y),

and

h o

is rigid in the sense that it has a unique companion. In case that

R

is a supersemifield (cf. Definition 4.1 below) and

q

is defined on a free

R

-module, we obtain an explicit classification of these decompositions

q = k a p p a + h o

and of all companions

b

of

q

. As an application to tropical geometry, given a quadratic form

q : V o R

on a free module

V

over a commutative ring

R

and a supervaluation

v a r p h i : R o U

with values in a supertropical semiring [5], we define - after choosing a base

L = (v_{i} | i i n I)

of

V

- a quadratic form

q^{v} a r p h i : U^{(I)} o U

on the free module

U^{(I)}

over the semiring

U

. The analysis of quadratic forms over a supertropical semiring enables one to measure the "position" of

q

with respect to

L

via

v a r p h i

.

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