A stable range for quadratic forms over commutative rings Original Research Article

A commutative ring A has quadratic stable range 1 (qsr(A) = 1) if each primitive binary quadratic form over A represents a unit. It is shown that qsr(A) = 1 implies that every primitive quadratic form over A represents a unit, A has stable range 1 and finitely generated constant rank projectives over A are free. A classification of quadratic forms is provided over Bezout domains with characteristic other than 2, quadratic stable range 1, and a strong approximation property for a certain subset of their maximum spectrum. These domains include rings of holomorphic functions on connected noncompact Riemann surfaces. Examples of localizations of rings of algebraic integers are provided to show that the classical concept of stable range does not behave well in either direction under finite integral extensions and that qsr(A) = 1 does not descend from such extensions.