Representation of positive semidefinite elements as sum of squares in 2-dimensional local rings

Abstract

A classical problem in real geometry concerns the representation of positive semidefinite elements of a ring $A$ as sums of squares of elements of $A$. If $A$ is an excellent ring of dimension $\geq3$, it is already known that it contains positive semidefinite elements that cannot be represented as sums of squares in $A$. The one dimensional local case has been afforded by Scheiderer (mainly when its residue field is real closed). In this work we focus on the $2$-dimensional case and determine (under some mild conditions) which local excellent henselian rings $A$ of embedding dimension $3$ have the property that every positive semidefinite element of $A$ is a sum of squares of elements of $A$.