Grothendieck's theorem on non-abelian $\,\, H^{2}$ and local-global principles

A theorem of Grothendieck asserts that over a perfect field $k$ of cohomological dimension one, all non-abelian $H^{2}$-cohomology sets of algebraic groups are trivial. The purpose of this paper is to establish a formally real generalization of this theorem. The generalization - to the context of perfect fields of virtual cohomological dimension one - takes the form of a local-global principle for the $H^{2}$-sets with respect to the orderings of the field. This principle asserts in particular that an element in $H^{2}$ is neutral precisely when it is neutral in the real closure with respect to every ordering in a dense subset of the real spectrum of $k$. Our techniques provide a new proof of Grothendieck's original theorem. An application to homogeneous spaces over $k$ is also given.