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The Banach-Tarski paradox in complete discretely valued fields

Functional Analysis 2026-02-10 v1 Group Theory Logic

Abstract

We prove some results related to the classical Banach--Tarski paradox in the setting of a field K\mathbb{K} that is complete with respect to a discrete non-Archimedean valuation (e.g., when K\mathbb{K} is the field Qp\mathbb{Q}_p of pp-adic numbers for a prime pp). Namely, the field K\mathbb{K}, as well as all balls and spheres in K\mathbb{K}, admit a paradoxical decomposition with respect to the isometry group of K\mathbb{K}. Such decompositions can be realized using pieces with the Baire property if K\mathbb{K} is separable. Under the additional assumption of local compactness of K\mathbb{K} (e.g., when K=Qp\mathbb{K}=\mathbb{Q}_p), any two bounded subsets of K\mathbb{K} with nonempty interiors are equidecomposable with respect to the isometry group of K\mathbb{K}. Our results complete the study of paradoxical decompositions in the non-Archimedean setting, addressing the one-dimensional case and building on earlier work for higher-dimensional normed spaces over K\mathbb{K} with respect to groups of affine isometries.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.08494,
  title  = {The Banach-Tarski paradox in complete discretely valued fields},
  author = {Kamil Orzechowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.08494},
  year   = {2026}
}

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18 pages