Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 25 3 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The idele group is the restricted productwith respect to at the finite places. Thus is an idele if all components are nonzero and is a unit at all but finitely many finite places. Its topology has basic open sets which equal the full unit subgroup outside finitely many places; it is not just the subspace topology of the unrestricted product. The group is locally compact, and the diagonal consists of the principal ideles. The idèle class group is .
The finite valuations give the idele-to-ideal homomorphismIts kernel is the product of the finite unit groups and the infinite multiplicative groups; principal ideles map to principal fractional ideals. Thus further quotienting gives the ideal class group. The product of normalized local moduli defines ; at complex places the normalized modulus is the square of the ordinary absolute value. The product formula says that principal ideles have modulus one. These constructions package ideals, units and archimedean conditions into one group.
Here is the precise reciprocity equivalence. For a finite abelian extension , the global law is a continuous Artin reciprocity mapwhich kills and sends a uniformizer idele at an unramified place to arithmetic Frobenius. Its full class-field-theoretic norm statement is . In the local formulation, the mapsare continuous, kill local units when unramified, send a local uniformizer to the same Frobenius, are compatible with restriction in towers, and obeyHere is the decomposition group of any prime above , independent of that choice because the extension is abelian. The usual local norm theorem identifies with . The principal-idele condition is the essential global compatibility; existence of unrelated local norm isomorphisms alone would not establish global reciprocity.
Given the compatible local maps, defineOnly finitely many factors are nontrivial: there are finitely many ramified places, and an idele is a unit almost everywhere. The product is a homomorphism. Continuity follows by choosing local kernel neighbourhoods at those exceptional places and the full unit groups elsewhere. The boxed compatibility kills , so the map descends to . At every unramified place it has the required Frobenius value. The local norm maps also show that idele norms are killed, since the local component of an idele norm is . Together with the class-field norm-index statement this gives the global norm-kernel formulation.
Conversely, embed in with every other component one, and set . Each restriction is continuous and has the required unramified normalization. An open kernel of the finite-valued global map contains a basic neighbourhood whose unrestricted finite-place factors are full unit groups outside a finite set. Hence those local restrictions kill units. For an arbitrary idele, remove the finitely many exceptional and nonunit components; the remainder lies in that kernel neighbourhood. It follows directly that is exactly the product of its local restrictions, not merely a map agreeing on single-component ideles. Its triviality on is exactly the boxed product relation. With the decomposition and norm assertions of the reciprocity theorem, these restrictions are the local reciprocity maps into with kernel .
One can explicitly connect this idelic formulation with the classical ideal law without assuming an idelic law in advance. A modulus of a number field records finitely many nonnegative exponents at finite places and a selected subset of real places. For a modulus , let have factors at finite places dividing the modulus, full units at other finite places, positive real numbers at specified real places, and full infinite multiplicative groups otherwise. Weak approximation for number fields supplies a global making lie in the specified local factors at the finitely many modulus places. Its valuations outside the modulus define an ideal prime to . A different such changes that ideal by a ray-principal ideal, and every ideal prime to is obtained. HenceAn ideal Artin map killing therefore extends to via this isomorphism; restricting it gives the local maps just constructed. Conversely, continuous local maps satisfying the product condition have an open product kernel containing some and hence make the ideal Artin map kill . This proves the idelic local-global reciprocity equivalence at the reciprocity-law level as well as the formal conversion of maps. The arithmetic Frobenius normalization and product relation agree with Milne's local-global reciprocity formulation.