English

Symbol length in the Brauer group of a field

Rings and Algebras 2014-02-04 v1

Abstract

We bound the symbol length of elements in the Brauer group of a field KK containing a CmC_m field (for example any field containing an algebraically closed field or a finite field), and solve the local exponent-index problem for a CmC_m field FF. In particular, for a CmC_m field FF, we show that every FF central simple algebra of exponent ptp^t is similar to the tensor product of at most len(pt,F)t(pm11)len(p^t,F)\leq t(p^{m-1}-1) symbol algebras of degree ptp^t. We then use this bound on the symbol length to show that the index of such algebras is bounded by (pt)(pm11)(p^t)^{(p^{m-1}-1)}, which in turn gives a bound for any algebra of exponent nn via the primary decomposition. Finally for a field KK containing a CmC_m field FF, we show that every FF central simple algebra of exponent ptp^t and degree psp^s is similar to the tensor product of at most len(pt,ps,K)len(pt,L)len(p^t,p^s,K)\leq len(p^t,L) symbol algebras of degree ptp^t, where LL is a Cm+edL(A)+pst1C_{m+ed_L(A)+p^{s-t}-1} field.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.0332,
  title  = {Symbol length in the Brauer group of a field},
  author = {Eliyahu Matzri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.0332},
  year   = {2014}
}