Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-rings-and-modules-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2017/1/b/v/solution

No field has six elements. A finite field has positive characteristic: the sequence must repeat. By part (a), this characteristic is a prime number . Translation by partitions the field into cycles of length , since returning to a starting point after steps is equivalent to . Thus divides six and or .
The multiples of form a copy of the prime field . For completeness, the inverse of a nonzero residue lies among these multiples: the integer Bezout identity gives . The entire field is a vector space over this subfield. A maximal linearly independent set is finite and spans, so it is a basis of some positive size . Unique basis coordinates give exactly elements. This proves finite field cardinality is a prime power here. But six is neither a power of two nor a power of three, a contradiction.

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