Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2007/ii/paper-2/20h/b/solution

Write . The ideals are , and , with residue fields of orders 2, 3 and 3 respectively. Thus their ideal norms are 2, 3 and 3.
The generators of are . They are multiples of 2, and the integer combination of 4 and 10 giving 2 proves . Similarly is generated by . The difference of the middle generators is 6; together with 9 this generates 3. Therefore the product is .
The ideals and are coprime, so their product equals their intersection. The element belongs to both, hence . Both ideals have norm 6, so equality holds. Likewise belongs to and , and its norm is . Thus
The discriminant is 40. The Minkowski bound for ideal classes in a real quadratic field is , so every ideal class has an integral representative of norm 1, 2 or 3. The only possible prime ideals with those norms are the ones just listed. Their classes satisfy and . Thus there are at most two classes. The ideal is not principal, since a generator would have norm , already ruled out. Therefore the class number is exactly two.

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