On the size of the fibers of spectral maps induced by semialgebraic embeddings

Let be the ring of (continuous) semialgebraic functions on a semialgebraic set M and its subring of bounded semialgebraic functions. In this work we compute the size of the fibers of the spectral maps and induced by the inclusion of a semialgebraic subset N of M. The ring can be understood as the localization of at the multiplicative subset of those bounded semialgebraic functions on M with empty zero set. This provides a natural inclusion that reduces both problems above to an analysis of the fibers of the spectral map . If we denote , it holds that the restriction map is a homeomorphism. Our problem concentrates on the computation of the size of the fibers of at the points of Z. The size of the fibers of prime ideals “close” to the complement provides valuable information concerning how N is immersed inside M. If N is dense in M, the map is surjective and the generic fiber of a prime ideal contains infinitely many elements. However, finite fibers may also appear and we provide a criterium to decide when the fiber is a finite set for . If such is the case, our procedure allows us to compute the size s of . If in addition N is locally compact and M is pure dimensional, s coincides with the number of minimal prime ideals contained in .