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Transactions of the American Mathematical Society

Published by the American Mathematical Society since 1900, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society is devoted to longer research articles in all areas of pure and applied mathematics.

ISSN 1088-6850 (online) ISSN 0002-9947 (print)

The 2020 MCQ for Transactions of the American Mathematical Society is 1.48.

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Factorization in generalized power series
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by Alessandro Berarducci PDF
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 352 (2000), 553-577 Request permission

Abstract:

The field of generalized power series with real coefficients and exponents in an ordered abelian divisible group $\mathbf {G}$ is a classical tool in the study of real closed fields. We prove the existence of irreducible elements in the ring $\mathbf {R}(( \mathbf {G}^{\leq 0}))$ consisting of the generalized power series with non-positive exponents. The following candidate for such an irreducible series was given by Conway (1976): $\sum _n t^{-1/n}+1$. Gonshor (1986) studied the question of the existence of irreducible elements and obtained necessary conditions for a series to be irreducible. We show that Conway’s series is indeed irreducible. Our results are based on a new kind of valuation taking ordinal numbers as values. If $\mathbf {G}= ( \mathbf {R}, +, 0, \leq )$ we can give the following test for irreducibility based only on the order type of the support of the series: if the order type is either $\omega$ or of the form $\omega ^{\omega ^\alpha }$ and the series is not divisible by any monomial, then it is irreducible. To handle the general case we use a suggestion of M.-H. Mourgues, based on an idea of Gonshor, which allows us to reduce to the special case $\mathbf {G}=\mathbf {R}$. In the final part of the paper we study the irreducibility of series with finite support.
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Additional Information
  • Alessandro Berarducci
  • Affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Matematica, Via Buonarroti 2, 56127 Pisa, Italy
  • MR Author ID: 228133
  • Email: berardu@dm.unipi.it
  • Received by editor(s): September 12, 1996
  • Received by editor(s) in revised form: July 22, 1997
  • Published electronically: May 20, 1999
  • Additional Notes: The results of this paper were presented at the A.S.L. meeting at S. Sebastian, July 9 - 15, 1996, and at the meeting “Model Theory of Fields”, Durham, July 22 - Aug. 1, 1996.
  • © Copyright 1999 American Mathematical Society
  • Journal: Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 352 (2000), 553-577
  • MSC (1991): Primary 06F25; Secondary 13A16, 03H15, 03E10, 12J25, 13A05
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/S0002-9947-99-02172-8
  • MathSciNet review: 1473431