Although there is no natural internal product for hermitian forms over an algebra with involution of the first kind, we describe how to multiply two $\varepsilon $ -hermitian forms to obtain a quadratic form over the base field. This allows to define a commutative graded ring structure by taking together bilinear forms and $\varepsilon $ -hermitian forms, which we call the mixed Witt ring of an algebra with involution. We also describe a less powerful version of this construction for unitary involutions, which still defines a ring, but with a grading over $\mathbb {Z}$ instead of the Klein group.

We first describe a general framework for defining graded rings out of monoidal functors from monoidal categories with strong symmetry properties to categories of modules. We then give a description of such a strongly symmetric category $\mathbf {Br}_h(K,\iota )$ which encodes the usual hermitian Morita theory of algebras with involutions over a field K.

We can therefore apply the general framework to $\mathbf {Br}_h(K,\iota )$ and the Witt group functors to define our mixed Witt rings, and derive their basic properties, including explicit formulas for products of diagonal forms in terms of involution trace forms, explicit computations for the case of quaternion algebras, and reciprocity formulas relative to scalar extensions.

We intend to describe in future articles further properties of those rings, such as a $\lambda $ -ring structure, and relations with the Milnor conjecture and the theory of signatures of hermitian forms.

A special linear Grassmann variety $\text{SGr}(k,n)$ is the complement to the zero section of the determinant of the tautological vector bundle over $\text{Gr}(k,n)$. For an $SL$-oriented representable ring cohomology theory $A^{\ast }(-)$ with invertible stable Hopf map ${\it\eta}$, including Witt groups and $\text{MSL}_{{\it\eta}}^{\ast ,\ast }$, we have $A^{\ast }(\text{SGr}(2,2n+1))\cong A^{\ast }(pt)[e]/(e^{2n})$, and $A^{\ast }(\text{SGr}(k,n))$ is a truncated polynomial algebra over $A^{\ast }(pt)$ whenever $k(n-k)$ is even. A splitting principle for such theories is established. Using the computations for the special linear Grassmann varieties, we obtain a description of $A^{\ast }(\text{BSL}_{n})$ in terms of homogeneous power series in certain characteristic classes of tautological bundles.

We challenge the classical belief that products of degenerate quadratic forms must remain degenerate and we show that this fails in general, e.g. over tensor triangulated categories with duality. This opens new ways of constructing non-degenerate quadratic forms and hence classes in Witt groups. In addition, we encapsulate in a Leibniz-type formula the behavior of the product with respect to the symmetric cone construction. We illustrate these ideas by computing the total Witt group of regular projective spaces.

Let $X$ be a regular separated scheme of finite Krull dimension and let $U^{n}_{X} \subset A^{n}_{X}$ be the punctured affine $n$-space over $X$. We show that the total graded Witt ring of $U^{n}_{X}$ is a free graded module over the total graded Witt ring of $X$ with two generators $1$ and $\epsilon$. The second generator satisfies the equation $\epsilon^{2} = 1$ when $n = 1$ and $\epsilon^{2} = 0$ when $n \geq 2$.