-extremal valued fields.
We develop a general axiomatic theory of algebraic pairs, which simultaneously generalizes several algebraic structures, in order to bypass negation as much as feasible. We investigate several classical theorems and notions in this setting including fractions, integral extensions, and Hilbert's Nullstellensatz. Finally, we study a notion of growth in this context.
Let K be a unique factorization domain of characteristic p > 0, and let f ∈ K[x₁,...,xₙ] be a polynomial not lying in . We prove that is the ring of constants of a K-derivation of K[x₁,...,xₙ] if and only if all the partial derivatives of f are relatively prime. The proof is based on a generalization of Freudenburg’s lemma to the case of polynomials over a unique factorization domain of arbitrary characteristic.