Nikita A. Karpenko: On the first Witt index of quadratic forms

karpenko@euler.univ-artois.fr

Submission: 2002, Jun 14

We prove Hoffmann's conjecture determining the possible values of the first Witt index of anisotropic quadratic forms of any given dimension. The proof makes use of the Steenrod type operations on the modulo 2 Chow groups constructed by P. Brosnan.

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 11E04; 14C25

Keywords and Phrases: Quadratic forms, first Witt index, Chow groups, Steenrod operations, correspondences.

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