Valuative trees over valued fields

Abstract

For an arbitrary valued field $(K,v)$ and a given extension $v(K^*)\hookrightarrow\Lambda$ of ordered groups, we analyze the structure of the tree formed by all $\Lambda$-valued extensions of $v$ to the polynomial ring $K[x]$. As an application, we find a model for the tree of all equivalence classes of valuations on $K[x]$ (without fixing their value group), whose restriction to $K$ is equivalent to $v$. In the henselian case, we apply these results to show that there is a complete parallelism between the arithmetic properties of irreducible polynomials $F\in K[x]$, encoded by their Okutsu frames, and the valuation-theoretic properties of their induced valuations $v_F$ on $K[x]$, encoded by their MacLane-Vaqui\'e chains. This parallelism was only known for defectless irreducible polynomials.