Rudin’s Definition of Ordered Fields

ordered-fields

In his Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Rudin defines ordered fields as follows:

An ordered field is a field $F$ which is also an order set, such that

(i) $x+y<x+z$ if $x, y, z\in F$ and $y<z$,

(ii) $xy>0$ if $x\in F$, $y\in F$, $x>0$, and $y>0$.

In the above definition, is it necessary to explicitly require for the order on $F$ to satisfy these two conditions? In other words, is it possible to have a field with an order such that (i) and (ii) do not hold?

Rudin defines orders as follows:

Let $S$ be a set. An order on $S$ is a relation, denoted by $<$, with the following two properties:

(iii)If $x\in S$ and $y\in S$ then one and only one of the statements $$x<y, ~~x=y,~~ y<x$$ is true.

(iv) If $x, y, z\in S$, if $x<y$ and $y<z$, then $x<z$.

Best Answer

Here is a simple example to demonstrate that a field together with an ordering on the underlying set is not automatically an ordered field.

The field is $\Bbb R$ with usual addition and multiplication.

The ordering is as follows. Let $\ll$ denote the following relation: $x \ll y$ if $x$ and $y$ are both rational and $x<y$ by the usual order, or if $x$ and $y$ are both irrational and $x<y$ by the usual order, or if $x$ is rational and $y$ is irrational.

In this order, we have both $\pi \gg 0$ and $-\pi \gg 0$, but their sum is not $\gg 0$.

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