Annihilating polynomials for quadratic forms英文文献资料.docVIP

PII.S0161171201011279 ANNIHILATINGPOLYNOMIALSFORQUADRATICFORMS DAVID W.LEWIS (Received 19December 2000) Abstract. Thisisashort survey ofthemain known results concerning annihilating poly- nomials forthe Witt ring ofquadratic forms over a?eld. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classi?cation. 11E81, 12F10, 19A22. Let F bea?eld ofcharacteristic di?erent from two. Werecall brie?y the Witt ring W(F)ofquadratic forms over F.Consider ?rst the set S ofisometry classes ofnon- singular quadratic forms overF.Wewrite G(F)forthefreeabelian group generated by the set S. We factor out by the subgroup generated by all elements of the form {φ1 ⊥φ2}?{φ1}?{φ2} where φ1 and φ2 are nonsingular quadratic forms, ⊥ de- notestheorthogonalsumofforms(de?nedviathedirectsumoftheunderlyingvector spaces),and{φ}denotestheisometryclassofaformφ.Theproductoftwoforms(de- ?nedviathetensorproductoftheunderlyingvectorspaces)isusedtomakeG(F)into acommutative ring.Thisissometimes knownastheWitt-Grothendieck ring.Theset of all hyperbolic forms, that is, orthogonal sums of copies of the two-dimensional hyperbolic plane, is an ideal in this ring and the Witt ring W(F) is the quotient ring obtainedbyfactoringoutthisideal.Wewillusetheterminology andnotationof[18] wherefurtherdetailsaboutquadratic formsandWittringsmaybefound. TheWittringwasinventedin1937[20]andWittseemedawarethathisringwasan integralringinthesensethateachelementisannihilated bysomemonicpolynomial with integer coe?cients. This integral property was exploited in [10] in 1972 in the context of quotients of abelian group rings. However it was not until 1987 that the ?rstexamplesweregivenofexplicitpolynomialswhichannihilatedparticularclasses ofquadratic formsinW(F).Consider thepolynomials pn(x) de?nedasfollows: forneven,pn(x)=x(x2?22)(x2?42)···(x2?n2); fornodd,p (x)=(x2?12)(x2?32)···(x2?n2). n (Note that p (x) is an odd polynomial for n even, that is, pn(?x) =?pn(x) for n allx,whilep (x)isanevenpolynomialfornodd,thatis,p (?x