Closed stability index of excellent henselian local rings

Abstract

We show that the closed stability index of an excellent henselian local ring of real dimension d>2 with real closed residue field is (s) over bar (A) = 1/2d(d+1). When d=2 it is shown that the value of can be either 2 or 3 and give characterizations of each of these values in terms of the relation of A with its normalization and in terms of the real spectrum of A.