Pfister's local-global principle for Azumaya algebras with involution
Vincent Astier, Thomas Unger
Published: 2022/10/10
Abstract
We prove Pfister's local-global principle for hermitian forms over Azumaya algebras with involution over semilocal rings, and show in particular that the Witt group of nonsingular hermitian forms is $2$-primary torsion. Our proof relies on a hermitian version of Sylvester's law of inertia, which is obtained from an investigation of the connections between a pairing of hermitian forms extensively studied by Garrel, signatures of hermitian forms, and positive semidefinite quadratic forms.