The Mayer-Vietoris principle for Grothendieck-Witt groups of schemes

Abstract

We prove localization and Zariski-Mayer-Vietoris for higher Grothendieck-Witt groups, alias hermitian $K$-groups, of schemes admitting an ample family of line-bundles. No assumption on the characteristic is needed, and our schemes can be singular. Along the way, we prove additivity, fibration and approximation theorems for the hermitian $K$-theory of exact categories with weak equivalences and duality.