Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 74 2 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let . Each field automorphism preserves the ring of integers and the base prime ideal, so it permutes the prime ideals above . Suppose there were more than one orbit, and fix one orbit . By the Chinese remainder theorem for ideals, choose such thatThe field norm lies in . It lies in every prime ideal of , since for a fixed member each conjugate of is zero modulo that member. Thus its contraction lies in . On the other hand, for outside , every is also outside it, so every equals one modulo . The product is consequently one modulo . This contradicts its membership in . Therefore the Galois action on the primes above is transitive. The normal extension of number fields is separable, so its conjugates are exactly the elements of used in the product.