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)

    No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Psychotherapy—The theory that the patient will probably get well anyway, and is certainly a damned ijjit.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)