Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/ib/paper-2/11g/c/solution

Put . Every extension of has characteristic , so the iterated Frobenius endomorphism satisfies
The root set is . It contains and . If , then
so it is closed under subtraction and multiplication. If is nonzero, then
Thus is closed under multiplicative inverses as well, and is therefore a field. This is the polynomial characterization of a finite field; in fact it is the finite field with elements, since has degree and no repeated roots.

New to topics? Read the docs here!