sdwannem@maths.ucd.ie
Submission: 2005, Aug 3
We present a set of generators of the full annihilator ideal for the Witt ring of an arbitrary field of characteristic unequal to two satisfying a non-vanishing condition on the powers of the fundamental ideal in the torsion part of the Witt ring. This settles a conjecture of Ongenae and Van Geel. This result could only be proved by first obtaining a new lower bound on the 2-adic valuation of Stirling numbers of the second kind.
2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 11B73, 11E04
Keywords and Phrases: Quadratic forms, Witt ring, Annihilating polynomials, Stirling numbers of the second kind
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