HIGHER PRODUCT PYTHAGORAS NUMBERS OF SKEW FIELDS

Abstract

We introduce the n–th product Pythagoras number p n(D), the skew field analogue of the n–th Pythagoras number of a field. For a valued skew field (D, v) where v has the property of preserving sums of permuted products of n–th powers when passing to the residue skew field k v and where Newton's lemma holds for polynomials of the form Xn - a, a ∈ 1 + I v , p n(D) is bounded above by either p n( k v ) or p n( k v ) + 1. Spherical completeness of a valued skew field (D, v) implies that the Newton's lemma holds for Xn - a, a ∈ 1 + I v but the lemma does not hold for arbitrary polynomials. Using the above results we deduce that p n (D((G))) = p n(D) for skew fields of generalized Laurent series.