Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 32 2 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write , and . The Eisenstein criterion at gives , whereas the prime cyclotomic field degree gives . The splitting field is a Galois extension of , and an automorphism fixing sends to . Thus its Galois group embeds in . It is nontrivial, since cannot be contained in the degree-four field . Therefore and .
Index the five roots by , with root . Every automorphism has the form , and acts on indices as , with . This is a faithful inclusion of into the affine group over a finite field, and both groups have order , so it is an isomorphism. This is the affine Galois group of a prime-radical splitting field.
Let be the specified decomposition group. Its nonidentity element is an involution. If its linear coefficient were , it would be a nontrivial translation, which has order . Hence it acts as . There is exactly one fixed root, at , and the other four roots form two pairs. By involution orbits in an affine group of odd prime degree, has three orbits on the five roots. Those roots identify with , so the double-coset formula gives three primes in .
For , the embeddings identify with . The image of is and acts by multiplication, giving the two orbits and . ThereforeThe orbit argument counts primes whether or not is ramified; cyclicity of the given order-two decomposition group does not require that it be generated by an unramified Frobenius element.