Surreal numbers with derivation, Hardy fields and transseries: a survey

Vincenzo Mantova, Mickaël Matusinski

Published 2016-08-11Version 1

The present article surveys surreal numbers with an informal approach, from their very first definition to their structure of universal real closed analytic and exponential field. Then we proceed to give an overview of the recent achievements on equipping them with a derivation, which is done by proving that surreal numbers can be seen as transseries and by finding the `simplest' structure of H-field, the abstract version of a Hardy field. All the latter notions and their context are also addressed, as well as the universality of the resulting structure for surreal numbers.