This paper introduces an approach to the axiomatic theory of quadratic forms based on {tmem{presentable}} partially ordered sets, that is partially ordered sets subject to additional conditions which amount to a strong form of local presentability. It turns out that the classical notion of the Witt ring of symmetric bilinear forms over a field makes sense in the context of {tmem{quadratically p...

1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. Definition of the Witt Rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3. Proof of the Existence of the Witt Rings . . . . . . . . ....

The reduced Witt rings of certain formally real fields are computed here in terms of some basic arithmetic invariants of the fields. For some fields, including the rational function field in one variable over the rational numbers and the rational function field in two variables over the real numbers, this is done by computing the image of the total signature map on the Witt ring. For a wider cl...

In “New Proofs of the structure theorems for Witt Rings”, the first author shows how the standard ring-theoretic results on the Witt ring can be deduced in a quick and elementary way from the fact that the Witt ring of a field is integral and from the specific nature of the explicit annihilating polynomials he provides. We will show in the present article that the same structure results hold fo...

The study of Witt rings of formally real fields in the algebraic theory of quadratic forms has led to a particularly good understanding of the finitely generated torsion free Witt rings. In this paper, we work primarily with a somewhat more general class of rings which can be completely characterized by (binary) matroids. The different types of standard constructions and invariants coming from ...