Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 81 2 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write , and for the number of primes above . The Galois group acts transitively on those primes, with stabilizer . The fundamental identity for prime decomposition and the orbit-stabilizer theorem therefore giveIt remains to establish that the residue action has image of order , rather than assume this in the desired equality.
Use the decomposition group of a prime and local Galois group identification . A generator of the finite field extension has a separable monic minimal polynomial of an algebraic element. Lift its coefficients to . The Hensel lemma lifts each of its distinct residue roots to . One such lift has field degree at most , while its residue generates the degree- finite field extension, so its field degree is exactly and its ramification index of a prime ideal is one. It therefore generates an unramified extension of degree , and sending it to each of the other lifts gives its embeddings. Because is a Galois extension, these embeddings extend to its automorphisms. Their reductions realize every automorphism of . Thus the residue action is surjective, and
Now let be cyclic of order , and let be its unique subgroup of order . In a tower of Galois extensions, inertia maps onto inertia in the intermediate extension. This also follows from the just-proved order formula: its image has order , using multiplicativity of the ramification index of a prime ideal in a tower. If ramifies in , this image in is nontrivial. Every proper subgroup of is contained in , so inertia upstairs must be . HenceThe fundamental identity for prime decomposition then also forces a single prime above and residue-field degree one.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 iii Paper 136 4 b Solution Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-03
Let and let lie over . These primes define two extensions to of the -adic absolute value on . The conjugacy of extensions of a valuation to a normal extension says that some carries the first extension to the second. Equivalently, . This proves the transitivity of the Galois action on primes.
The decomposition group is the stabilizerEach such automorphism extends continuously to the completions, and restriction gives the decomposition group of a prime and local Galois group isomorphism
For the splitting field of , the global Galois group is . Since , the field contains . The local splitting field is therefore , an Eisenstein, totally ramified cyclic extension of degree three. Hence there areprimes of above , and the decomposition group of each is the normal subgroup