Work in , since . First must be odd: if it were even, coprimality would make odd, so , which cannot be an odd power for . Thus is odd too. Also no odd prime can divide both and . Such a prime does not divide , and square-freeness of gives , whereas is divisible by . Hence .
Put . Suppose a prime ideal divides both and , and let be the rational prime below it. It then contains and . The case is impossible because is odd. If is odd, the first inclusion gives , and makes nonzero in the residue field. The second inclusion therefore gives , so , contradicting the previous paragraph. Thus and are coprime ideals. In particular they generate the unit ideal, the precise meaning of coprimality here; no unique factorization of elements is assumed.
Their product is . Unique prime ideal factorization and disjoint prime support imply for an integral ideal . In the ideal class group, . Since does not divide the class number, Lagrange's theorem forces . Write . Equality of the principal ideals gives . The only units are , since a unit satisfies and . Both signs are th powers for odd , so they can be absorbed into the generator:
Apply the class-number obstruction from a ramified odd exponent. For the equation with and , compare the coefficients of in this identity. The coefficient on the right is
Its term is divisible by , and every term contains a factor , so the whole coefficient is divisible by . The coefficient on the left is one, a contradiction. Thus there are no positive integer solutions under the stated class-number and divisibility assumptions.
Finally,
The integer is square-free, is two modulo four, and is divisible by three. If its imaginary quadratic class number were not divisible by three, the preceding result with would prohibit this solution. Consequently
Ring of integers Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
The ring of integers of a number field is
It is the integral closure of in . Its additive group is a free abelian group of rank , so an integral basis writes every element uniquely as with . Its field of fractions is .[ref]
For , this gives ; for , it gives . The Gaussian integers give the corresponding example inside . The ring of integers is determined by the field, and need not equal for a chosen algebraic integer generator: in , the larger ring contains with index two.
This is the setting for divisibility, global units, and prime ideal factorization. A ring of integers is a Dedekind domain, so every nonzero proper ideal factors uniquely into nonzero prime ideals, even when unique factorization of elements fails.[ref]