On minimal pairs and residually transcendental extensions of valuations

In this paper, further insight is obtained into the earlier approach of studying residually transcendental extensions of a valuation v of a field K to a simple transcendental extension K(x) of K by means of minimal pairs, thereby introducing new invariants corresponding to any element of an algebraic closure λ of K. It is also shown that these invariants are of independent interest as well. A characterization of those elements a belonging to λ is given such that there exists a minimal pair (a, δ) for some δ in the divisible closure of the value group of v.