Surreal numbers with derivation, Hardy fields and transseries: a survey

The present survey article has two aims: - To provide an intuitive and accessible introduction to the theory of the field of surreal numbers with exponential and logarithmic functions. - To give an overview of some of the recent achievements. In particular, the field of surreal numbers carries a derivation which turns it into a universal domain for Hardy fields

On fewnomials, integral points and a toric version of Bertini's theorem

An old conjecture of Erdős and Rényi, proved by Schinzel, predicted a bound for the number of terms of a polynomial g(x)∈ℂ[x] when its square g(x)² has a given number of terms. Further conjectures and results arose, but some fundamental questions remained open. In this paper, with methods which appear to be new, we achieve a final result in this direction for completely general algebraic equations f(x,g(x))=0, where f(x,y) is monic of arbitrary degree in y, and has boundedly many terms in x: we prove that the number of terms of such a g(x) is necessarily bounded. This includes the previous results as extremely special cases. We shall interpret polynomials with boundedly many terms as the restrictions to 1-parameter subgroups or cosets of regular functions of bounded degree on a given torus Glm. Such a viewpoint shall lead to some best-possible corollaries in the context of finite covers of Glm, concerning the structure of their integral points over function fields (in the spirit of conjectures of Vojta) and a Bertini-type irreducibility theorem above algebraic multiplicative cosets. A further natural reading occurs in non-standard arithmetic, where our result translates into an algebraic and integral-closedness statement inside the ring of non-standard polynomials

Polynomial–exponential equations and Zilber's conjecture

Assuming Schanuel's conjecture, we prove that any polynomial–exponential equation in one variable must have a solution that is transcendental over a given finitely generated field. With the help of some recent results in Diophantine geometry, we obtain the result by proving (unconditionally) that certain polynomial–exponential equations have only finitely many rational solutions. This answers affirmatively a question of David Marker, who asked, and proved in the case of algebraic coefficients, whether at least the one variable case of Zilber's strong exponential-algebraic closedness conjecture can be reduced to Schanuel's conjecture

Transseries as germs of surreal functions

We show that Écalle's transseries and their variants (LE and EL-series) can be interpreted as functions from positive infinite surreal numbers to surreal numbers. The same holds for a much larger class of formal series, here called omega-series. Omega-series are the smallest subfield of the surreal numbers containing the reals, the ordinal omega, and closed under the exp and log functions and all possible infinite sums. They form a proper class, can be composed and differentiated, and are surreal analytic. The surreal numbers themselves can be interpreted as a large field of transseries containing the omega-series, but, unlike omega-series, they lack a composition operator compatible with the derivation introduced by the authors in an earlier paper

Factorisation theorems for generalised power series

Fields of generalised power series (or Hahn fields), with coefficients in a field and exponents in a divisible ordered abelian group, are a fundamental tool in the study of valued and ordered fields and asymptotic expansions. The subring of the series with non-positive exponents appear naturally when discussing exponentiation, as done in transseries, or integer parts. A notable example is the ring of omnific integers inside the field of Conway's surreal numbers. In general, the elements of such subrings do not have factorisations into irreducibles. In the context of omnific integers, Conway conjectured in 1976 that certain series are irreducible (proved by Berarducci in 2000), and that any two factorisations of a given series share a common refinement. Here we prove a factorisation theorem for the ring of series with non-positive real exponents: every series is shown to be a product of irreducible series with infinite support and a factor with finite support which is unique up to constants. From this, we shall deduce a general factorisation theorem for series with exponents in an arbitrary divisible ordered abelian group, including omnific integers as a special case. We also obtain new irreducibility and primality criteria. To obtain the result, we prove that a new ordinal-valued function, which we call degree, is a valuation on the ring of generalised power series with real exponents, and we formulate some structure results on the associated RV monoid

Exponential fields and Conway's omega-map

Inspired by Conway's surreal numbers, we study real closed fields whose value group is isomorphic to the additive reduct of the field. We call such fields omega-fields and we prove that any omega-field of bounded Hahn series with real coefficients admits an exponential function making it into a model of the theory of the real exponential field. We also consider relative versions with more general coefficient fields

L'Italia come modello per l'Europa e per il mondo nelle politiche sanitarie per il trattamento dell'epatite cronica da HCV

The World Health Organization foresees the elimination of HCV infection by 2030. In light of this and the curre nt, nearly worldwide, restriction in direct-acting agents (DAA) accessibility due to their high price, we aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of two alternative DAA treatment policies: Policy 1 (universal): treat all patients, regardless of the fibrosis stage; Policy 2 (prioritized): treat only priori tized patients and delay treatment of the remaining patients until reaching stage F3. T he model was based on patient’s data from the PITER cohort. We demonstrated that extending HC V treatment of patients in any fibrosis stage improves health outcomes and is cost-effective

Algebraic equations with lacunary polynomials and the Erdos-Renyi conjecture

In 1947, Rényi, Kalmár and Rédei discovered some special polynomials p(x)∈C[x] for which the square p(x)2 has fewer non-zero terms than p(x). Rényi and Erdős then conjectured that if the number of terms of p(x) grows to infinity, then the same happens for p(x)2. The conjecture was later proved by Schinzel, strengthened by Zannier, and a 'final' generalisation was proved by C. Fuchs, Zannier and the author. This note is a survey of the known results, with a focus on the applications of the latest generalisation