Formal derivative in positive characteristic Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
In characteristic , the coefficient in a formal derivative vanishes exactly when divides .
Put and . Evaluation at is surjective, and
so its kernel is the prime ideal . In particular is naturally an -module, generated by the classes of .
For integers , including negative integers, reduction modulo gives
For negative powers, this follows from and ; the mixed product vanishes modulo . Therefore a Laurent polynomial satisfies
The formal derivatives obey the product rule, so . If , both terms vanish. Hence both vanish on and define a map
It sends to and to , and the displayed expansion gives its inverse. Thus the conormal module has the explicit basis
Let be the localization at a prime ideal, with maximal ideal . Every nonzero integer lies outside and is therefore inverted. The residue field is
Indeed there is an explicit identification
inverting and has no effect in this local ring, and a polynomial denominator lies outside precisely when its constant term is nonzero. Conversely, clearing rational denominators turns every such fraction into a fraction from .
For the Krull dimension, the prime ideal correspondence for localization preserves the strict chain
of prime ideals in . They are prime because the successive quotients are the integral domains , , and . They remain distinct after localization at a prime ideal because they are all contained in . Hence .
For the upper bound, is a Noetherian ring by the Hilbert basis theorem and Localization of a Noetherian ring. Since is generated by two elements, the Krull height theorem gives . The prime ideal correspondence for localization identifies with , so
A Noetherian local ring with residue field is a regular local ring if
By the Nakayama lemma, the dimension on the left is the minimal number of generators of ; this is also called the embedding dimension.
The localization of a module is exact and commutes with quotients and products of ideals. Applying it to the already computed conormal module gives the cotangent space of a local ring
Its dimension is two, equal to . Therefore . Notice that has a basis over , whereas the localized cotangent space of a local ring has a basis over the residue field .
Let be a splitting field of over . Its formal derivative is
The assumption on the characteristic of says that in . Any root of is nonzero, and hence . Thus and have no common root, so is a separable polynomial. Since it has degree and splits over , it has exactly distinct roots. This is the separability of roots of unity.
Fix a primitive root of unity . Define the th cyclotomic polynomial by
It is monic and has degree given by the Euler totient function . Partitioning all th roots of unity according to their exact multiplicative order gives the cyclotomic factorization
We now prove by mathematical induction that . The base case is . If the result holds for every proper divisor of , then
is monic and belongs to . Polynomial division of by the monic integer polynomial produces a quotient and remainder in . The factorization over says that the remainder is zero and the quotient is , proving the claim.
It remains to prove irreducibility of cyclotomic polynomials. Let be a monic irreducible polynomial dividing , let be a root of , and write . We claim that is a root of for every prime number . Otherwise is a root of , so is a root of . Since is the minimal polynomial of over , Gauss lemma for polynomials gives
After reduction of an integer polynomial modulo a prime, the Frobenius endomorphism gives
Choose an irreducible factor of the nonconstant monic polynomial . Then , so . The cyclotomic factorization would then make divide over . This is impossible because its derivative is coprime to it when .
Thus for every prime . Iterating this fact over a prime factorization shows that whenever . These are all primitive th roots, so
Because divides , equality holds and . Hence every cyclotomic polynomial is irreducible over .
Finally, direct multiplication gives
Also
Applying the cyclotomic factorization to the two factors on the right gives
and therefore
Since , cancellation yields
The thirtieth cyclotomic polynomial is irreducible over by the theorem just proved, so is irreducible.
If the characteristic of a field does not divide the positive integer , then is separable. Its formal derivative is , and a common root would have to be both nonzero and zero.
Separable polynomial Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
A polynomial over a field is separable when it has no repeated root in a splitting field. Equivalently, it is coprime to its formal derivative.