On the Pierce-Birkhoff Conjecture

This paper represents a step in our program towards the proof of the Pierce--Birkhoff conjecture. In the nineteen eighties J. Madden proved that the Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture for a ring A$is equivalent to a statement about an arbitrary pair of points$\alpha,\beta\in\sper\ A$and their separating ideal$$; we refer to this statement as the Local Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture at$\alpha,\beta$. In this paper, for each pair$(\alpha,\beta)$with$ht()=\dim A$, we define a natural number, called complexity of$(\alpha,\beta)$. Complexity 0 corresponds to the case when one of the points$\alpha,\beta$is monomial; this case was already settled in all dimensions in a preceding paper. Here we introduce a new conjecture, called the Strong Connectedness conjecture, and prove that the strong connectedness conjecture in dimension n-1 implies the connectedness conjecture in dimension n in the case when$ht()$is less than n-1. We prove the Strong Connectedness conjecture in dimension 2, which gives the Connectedness and the Pierce--Birkhoff conjectures in any dimension in the case when$ht()$less than 2. Finally, we prove the Connectedness (and hence also the Pierce--Birkhoff) conjecture in the case when dimension of A is equal to$ht()=3$, the pair$(\alpha,\beta)$is of complexity 1 and$A$ is excellent with residue field the field of real numbers

On points at infinity of real spectra of polynomial rings

Let R be a real closed field and A=R[x_1,...,x_n]. Let sper A denote the real spectrum of A. There are two kinds of points in sper A : finite points (those for which all of |x_1|,...,|x_n| are bounded above by some constant in R) and points at infinity. In this paper we study the structure of the set of points at infinity of sper A and their associated valuations. Let T be a subset of {1,...,n}. For j in {1,...,n}, let y_j=x_j if j is not in T and y_j=1/x_j if j is in T. Let B_T=R[y_1,...,y_n]. We express sper A as a disjoint union of sets of the form U_T and construct a homeomorphism of each of the sets U_T with a subspace of the space of finite points of sper B_T. For each point d at infinity in U_T, we describe the associated valuation v_{d*} of its image d* in sper B_T in terms of the valuation v_d associated to d. Among other things we show that the valuation v_{d*} is composed with v_d (in other words, the valuation ring R_d is a localization of R_{d*} at a suitable prime ideal)

The Nash problem of arcs and its solution

7 pagesHistorical overview of Nash Problem of arcs in the EMS NewsletterThe goal of this paper is to give a historical overview of the Nash Problem of arcs in arbitrary dimension, as well as its a rmative solution in dimension two by J. Fernandez de Bobadilla and M. Pe Pereira and a negative solution in higher dimensions by T. de Fernex, S. Ishii and J. Koll ar. This problem was stated by J. Nash around 1963 and has been an important subject of research in singularity theory

On the set of bad primes in the study of Casas-Alvero Conjecture

The Casas-Alvero conjecture predicts that every univariate polynomial over a field of characteristic zero having a common factor with each of its derivatives $H_i(f)$ is a power of a linear polynomial. One approach to proving the conjecture is to first prove it for polynomials of some small degree $d$, compile a list of bad primes for that degree (namely, those primes $p$ for which the conjecture fails in degree $d$ and characteristic $p$) and then deduce the conjecture for all degrees of the form $dp^\ell$, $\ell\in\mathbb{N}$, where $p$ is a good prime for $d$. In this paper we calculate certain distinguished monomials appearing in the resultant $R(f,H_i(f))$ and obtain a (non-exhaustive) list of bad primes for every degree $d\in\mathbb{N}\setminus\{0\}$