English

Analysis on Surreal Numbers

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2015-05-21 v3 General Topology Logic

Abstract

The class No\mathbf{No} of surreal numbers, which John Conway discovered while studying combinatorial games, possesses a rich numerical structure and shares many arithmetic and algebraic properties with the real numbers. Some work has also been done to develop analysis on No\mathbf{No}. In this paper, we extend this work with a treatment of functions, limits, derivatives, power series, and integrals. We propose surreal definitions of the arctangent and logarithm functions using truncations of Maclaurin series. Using a new representation of surreals, we present a formula for the limit of a sequence, and we use this formula to provide a complete characterization of convergent sequences and to evaluate certain series and infinite Riemann sums via extrapolation. A similar formula allows us to evaluates limits (and hence derivatives) of functions. By defining a new topology on No\mathbf{No}, we obtain the Intermediate Value Theorem even though No\mathbf{No} is not Cauchy complete, and we prove that the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus would hold for surreals if a consistent definition of integration exists. Extending our study to defining other analytic functions, evaluating power series in generality, finding a consistent definition of integration, proving Stokes' Theorem to generalize surreal integration, and studying differential equations remains open.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1307.7392,
  title  = {Analysis on Surreal Numbers},
  author = {Simon Rubinstein-Salzedo and Ashvin Swaminathan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.7392},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:59:10.299Z