Factorisation theorems for generalised power series

Abstract

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