Ideal Class Group - Connections To Class Field Theory

Connections To Class Field Theory

Class field theory is a branch of algebraic number theory which seeks to classify all the abelian extensions of a given algebraic number field, meaning Galois extensions with abelian Galois group. A particularly beautiful example is found in the Hilbert class field of a number field, which can be defined as the maximal unramified abelian extension of such a field. The Hilbert class field L of a number field K is unique and has the following properties:

  • Every ideal of the ring of integers of K becomes principal in L, i.e., if I is an integral ideal of K then the image of I is a principal ideal in L.
  • L is a Galois extension of K with Galois group isomorphic to the ideal class group of K.

Neither property is particularly easy to prove.

Read more about this topic:  Ideal Class Group

Famous quotes containing the words connections, class, field and/or theory:

    Our business being to colonize the country, there was only one way to do it—by spreading over it all the associations and connections of family life.
    Henry Parkes (1815–1896)

    There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.
    W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)

    A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)