Semi Algebraic Function Rings And Reflectors Of Partially Ordered Rings

Semi-algebraic Function Rings and Reflectors of Partially Ordered Rings

The book lays algebraic foundations for real geometry through a systematic investigation of partially ordered rings of semi-algebraic functions. Real spectra serve as primary geometric objects, the maps between them are determined by rings of functions associated with the spectra. The many different possible choices for these rings of functions are studied via reflections of partially ordered rings. Readers should feel comfortable using basic algebraic and categorical concepts. As motivational background some familiarity with real geometry will be helpful. The book aims at researchers and graduate students with an interest in real algebra and geometry, ordered algebraic structures, topology and rings of continuous functions.

Semi-Algebraic Function Rings and Reflectors of Partially Ordered Rings

Ordered Algebraic Structures

From the 28th of February through the 3rd of March, 2001, the Department of Math ematics of the University of Florida hosted a conference on the many aspects of the field of Ordered Algebraic Structures. Officially, the title was "Conference on Lattice Ordered Groups and I-Rings", but its subject matter evolved beyond the limitations one might associate with such a label. This volume is officially the proceedings of that conference, although, likewise, it is more accurate to view it as a complement to that event. The conference was the fourth in wh at has turned into aseries of similar conferences, on Ordered Algebraic Structures, held in consecutive years. The first, held at the University of Florida in Spring, 1998, was a modest and informal affair. The fifth is in the final planning stages at this writing, for March 7-9, 2002, at Vanderbilt University. And although these events remain modest and reasonably informal, their scope has broadened, as they have succeeded in attracting mathematicians from other, related fields, as weIl as from more distant lands.