Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2005/ii/paper-4/18g/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 ii Paper 4 18G i Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Let and , so . The roots are . The element is not a square in : its field norm is , whereas the field norm of a square is a square of a rational number and hence nonnegative. Thus , and . This also proves irreducibility of the quartic.
The splitting field is , since and . Because , adjoining doubles the degree:The Galois group acts faithfully on the four roots and preserves the partition into the two opposite pairs and , possibly interchanging the pairs. The full permutation group preserving this partition has order eight and is the dihedral group of a square. Since the Galois group has order eight, it is exactly that group. Equivalently its generators can be chosen as and complex conjugation , with and .
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