arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Arno Fehm.
We study when the property that a field is dense in its real and p-adic closures is elementary in the language of rings and deduce that all models of the theory of algebraic fields have this property.
The classical Artin--Whaples approximation theorem allows to simultaneously approximate finitely many different elements of a field with respect to finitely many pairwise inequivalent absolute values. Several variants and generalizations exist, for example for finitely many (Krull) valuations, where one usually requires that these are independent, i.e. induce different topologies on the field. Ribenboim proved a generalization for finitely many valuations where the condition of independence is relaxed for a natural compatibility condition, and Ershov proved a statement about simultaneously approximating finitely many different elements with respect to finitely many possibly infinite sets of pairwise independent valuations. We prove approximation theorems for infinite sets of valuations and orderings without requiring pairwise independence.
Siegel proved that every totally positive element of a number field K is the sum of four squares, so in particular the Pythagoras number is uniformly bounded across number fields. The p-adic Kochen operator provides a p-adic analogue of squaring, and a certain localisation of the ring generated by this operator consists of precisely the totally p-integral elements of K. We use this to formulate and prove a p-adic analogue of Siegel's theorem, by introducing the p-Pythagoras number of a general field, and showing that this number is uniformly bounded across number fields. We also generally study fields with finite p-Pythagoras number and show that the growth of the p-Pythagoras number in finite extensions is bounded.
A central conjecture in inverse Galois theory, proposed by Dèbes and Deschamps, asserts that every finite split embedding problem over an arbitrary field can be regularly solved. We give an unconditional proof of a consequence of this conjecture, namely that such embedding problems can be regularly solved if one waives the requirement that the solution fields are normal. This extends previous results of M. Fried, Takahashi, Deschamps, and the last two authors concerning the realization of finite groups as automorphism groups of field extensions.
We give three examples of fields concerning the Northcott property on elements of small height: The first one has the Northcott property but its Galois closure does not satisfy the Bogomolov property. The second one has the Northcott property and is pseudo-algebraically closed, i.e. every variety has a dense set of rational points. The third one has bounded local degree at infinitely many rational primes but does not have the Northcott property.
We investigate a function field analogue of a recent conjecture on autocorrelations of sums of two squares by Freiberg, Kurlberg and Rosenzweig, which generalizes an older conjecture by Connors and Keating. In particular, we provide extensive numerical evidence and prove it in the large finite field limit. Our method can also handle correlations of other arithmetic functions and we give applications to (function field analogues of) the average of sums of two squares on shifted primes, and to autocorrelations of higher divisor functions twisted by a quadratic character.
Although the study of the definability of henselian valuations has a long history starting with J. Robinson, most of the results in this area were proven during the last few years. We survey these results which address the definability of concrete henselian valuations, the existence of definable henselian valuations on a given field, and questions of uniformity and quantifier complexity.
We give a characterization, in terms of the residue field, of those henselian valuation rings and those henselian valuation ideals that are diophantine. This characterization gives a common generalization of all the positive and negative results on diophantine henselian valuation rings and diophantine valuation ideals in the literature. We also treat questions of uniformity and we apply the results to show that a given field can carry at most one diophantine nontrivial equicharacteristic henselian valuation ring or valuation ideal.
Landau's theorem asserts that the asymptotic density of sums of two squares in the interval $1\leq n\leq x$ is $K/{\sqrt{\log x}}$, where $K$ is the Landau-Ramanujan constant. It is an old problem in number theory whether the asymptotic density remains the same in intervals $|n-x|\leq x^ε$ for a fixed $ε$ and $x\to \infty$. This work resolves a function field analogue of this problem, in the limit of a large finite field. More precisely, consider monic $f_0\in \mathbb{F}_q[T]$ of degree $n$ and take $ε$ with $1>ε\geq \frac2n$. Then the asymptotic density of polynomials $f$ in the `interval' ${\rm deg}(f-f_0)\leq εn$ that are of the form $f=A^2+TB^2$, $A,B\in \mathbb{F}_q[T]$ is $\frac{1}{4^n}\binom{2n}{n}$ as $q\to \infty$. This density agrees with the asymptotic density of such monic $f$'s of degree $n$ as $q\to \infty$, as was shown by the second author, Smilanski, and Wolf. A key point in the proof is the calculation of the Galois group of $f(-T^2)$, where $f$ is a polynomial of degree $n$ with a few variable coefficients: The Galois group is the hyperoctahedral group of order $2^nn!$.
We study the existential (and parts of the universal-existential) theory of equicharacteristic henselian valued fields. We prove, among other things, an existential Ax-Kochen-Ershov principle, which roughly says that the existential theory of an equicharacteristic henselian valued field (of arbitrary characteristic) is determined by the existential theory of the residue field; in particular, it is independent of the value group. As an immediate corollary, we get an unconditional proof of the decidability of the existential theory of $\mathbb{F}_{q}((t))$.
We discuss definability in the language of rings without parameters of the unique canonical henselian valuation of a field. We show that in most cases where the canonical henselian valuation is definable, it is already definable by a universal-existential or an existential-universal formula.
We discuss definability of henselian valuation rings in the Macintyre language $\mathcal{L}_{\rm Mac}$, the language of rings expanded by n-th power predicates. In particular, we show that henselian valuation rings with finite or Hilbertian residue field are uniformly $\exists$-$\emptyset$-definable in $\mathcal{L}_{\rm Mac}$, and henselian valuation rings with value group $\mathbb{Z}$ are uniformly $\exists\forall$-$\emptyset$-definable in the ring language, but not uniformly $\exists$-$\emptyset$-definable in $\mathcal{L}_{\rm Mac}$. We apply these results to local fields $\mathbb{Q}_p$ and $\mathbb{F}_p((t))$, as well as to higher dimensional local fields.
We define and investigate a family of local-global principles for fields involving both orderings and p-valuations. This family contains the PAC, PRC and PpC fields and exhausts the class of pseudo classically closed fields. We show that the fields satisfying such a local-global principle form an elementary class, admit diophantine definitions of holomorphy domains, and their orderings satisfy the strong approximation property.
We analyze the elementary theory of certain fields of totally S-adic algebraic numbers that were introduced and studied by Geyer-Jarden and Haran-Jarden-Pop. In particular, we provide an axiomatization of these theories and prove their decidability, thereby giving a common generalization of classical decidability results of Jarden-Kiehne, Fried-Haran-Völklein and Ershov.
We construct and study fields F with the property that F has infinitely many extensions of some fixed degree, but E*/(E*)^n is finite for every finite extension E of F and every n>0.
We prove a new Hilbertianity criterion for fields in towers whose steps are Galois with Galois group either abelian or a product of finite simple groups. We then apply this criterion to fields arising from Galois representations. In particular we settle a conjecture of Jarden on abelian varieties.
Recently, Anscombe and Koenigsmann gave an existential 0-definition of the ring of formal power series F[[t]] in its quotient field in the case where F is finite. We extend their method in several directions to give general definability results for henselian valued fields with finite or pseudo-algebraically closed residue fields.
Given a finite set $S$ of places of a number field, we prove that the field of totally $S$-adic algebraic numbers is not Hilbertian.