Branches in the Bruhat-Tits tree for local fields of even characteristic

Abstract

We extend our previous computations for the relative positions of branches of quaternions to the case of local fields of even characteristic. This is a key step to understand the set of maximal orders containing a given suborder, which is useful, for instance, to compute relative spinor images, thus solving the selectivity problem. In our previous work, the results where given in terms of the quadratic defect. In the present context, we introduce and characterize an analogous concept for Artin-Schreier extensions. It is no longer useful to restrict our attention to orders generated by pure quaternions, as a separable quadratic extension contains no non-trivial element of null trace. In this work we state our result for an arbitrary pair of generators, for which we discuss a more general version of the Hilbert symbol in this context.