Super-Real Fields : Totally Ordered Fields with Additional Structure

This advanced text expounds the established theory of ordered fields, and continues to develop a quite original theory of super-real fields. This theory has important applications in analysis and logic.

Super-real fields are a class of large totally ordered fields. These fields are larger than the real line. They arise from quotients of the algebra of continuous functions on a compact space by a prime ideal, and generalize the well-known class of ultrapowers, and indeed the continuous ultrapowers. These fields are of interest in their own right and have many surprising applications, both in analysis and logic. The authors introduce some exciting new fields, including a natural generalization of the real line R, and resolve a number of open problems. The book is intended to be accessible to analysts and logicians. After an exposition of the general theory of ordered fields and a careful proof of some classic theorems, including Kaplansky''s embedding theorems , the authors establish important new results in Banach algebra theory, non-standard analysis, an model theory.