In mathematics, the Levi-Civita field, named after Tullio Levi-Civita,[1] is a non-Archimedean ordered field; i.e., a system of numbers containing infinite and infinitesimal quantities. It is usually denoted .

Each member can be constructed as a formal series of the form

where is the set of rational numbers, the coefficients are real numbers, and is to be interpreted as a fixed positive infinitesimal. We require that for every rational number , there are only finitely many less than with ; this restriction is necessary in order to make multiplication and division well defined and unique. Two such series are considered equal only if all their coefficients are equal. The ordering is defined according to the dictionary ordering of the list of coefficients, which is equivalent to the assumption that is an infinitesimal.

The real numbers are embedded in this field as series in which all of the coefficients vanish except .

Examples

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  •   is an infinitesimal that is greater than  , but less than every positive real number.
  •   is less than  , and is also less than   for any positive real  .
  •   differs infinitesimally from 1.
  •   is greater than   and even greater than   for any positive real  , but   is still less than every positive real number.
  •   is greater than any real number.
  •   is interpreted as  , which differs infinitesimally from 1.
  •   is a valid member of the field, because the series is to be constructed formally, without any consideration of convergence.

Definition of the field operations and positive cone

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If   and   are two Levi-Civita series, then

  • their sum   is the pointwise sum  .
  • their product   is the Cauchy product  .

(One can check that for every   the set   is finite, so that all the products are well-defined, and that the resulting series defines a valid Levi-Civita series.)

  • the relation   holds if   (i.e. at least one coefficient of   is non-zero) and the least non-zero coefficient of   is strictly positive.

Equipped with those operations and order, the Levi-Civita field is indeed an ordered field extension of   where the series   is a positive infinitesimal.

Properties and applications

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The Levi-Civita field is real-closed, meaning that it can be algebraically closed by adjoining an imaginary unit (i), or by letting the coefficients be complex. It is rich enough to allow a significant amount of analysis to be done, but its elements can still be represented on a computer in the same sense that real numbers can be represented using floating point. It is the basis of automatic differentiation, a way to perform differentiation in cases that are intractable by symbolic differentiation or finite-difference methods.[2]

The Levi-Civita field is also Cauchy complete, meaning that relativizing the   definitions of Cauchy sequence and convergent sequence to sequences of Levi-Civita series, each Cauchy sequence in the field converges. Equivalently, it has no proper dense ordered field extension.

As an ordered field, it has a natural valuation given by the rational exponent corresponding to the first non zero coefficient of a Levi-Civita series. The valuation ring is that of series bounded by real numbers, the residue field is  , and the value group is  . The resulting valued field is Henselian (being real closed with a convex valuation ring) but not spherically complete. Indeed, the field of Hahn series with real coefficients and value group   is a proper immediate extension, containing series such as   which are not in the Levi-Civita field.

Relations to other ordered fields

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The Levi-Civita field is the Cauchy-completion of the field   of Puiseux series over the field of real numbers, that is, it is a dense extension of   without proper dense extension. Here is a list of some of its notable proper subfields and its proper ordered field extensions:

Notable subfields

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  • The field   of real numbers.
  • The field   of fractions of real polynomials (rational functions) with infinitesimal positive indeterminate  .
  • The field   of formal Laurent series over  .
  • The field   of Puiseux series over  .

Notable extensions

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  • The field   of Hahn series with real coefficients and rational exponents.
  • The field   of logarithmic-exponential transseries.
  • The field   of surreal numbers with birthdate below the first  -number  .
  • Fields of hyperreal numbers constructed as ultrapowers of   modulo a free ultrafilter on   (although here the embeddings are not canonical).

References

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  1. ^ Levi-Civita, Tullio (1893). "Sugli infiniti ed infinitesimi attuali quali elementi analitici" [On the actual infinites and infinitesimals as analytical elements]. Atti Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (in Italian). LI (7a): 1795–1815.
  2. ^ Khodr Shamseddine, Martin Berz "Analysis on the Levi-Civita Field: A Brief Overview", Contemporary Mathematics, 508 pp. 215–237 (2010)
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