Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 3 18F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Let be a splitting field of over . Its formal derivative isThe 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 byIt 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 factorizationWe now prove by mathematical induction that . The base case is . If the result holds for every proper divisor of , thenis 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 givesAfter reduction of an integer polynomial modulo a prime, the Frobenius endomorphism givesChoose 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, soBecause divides , equality holds and . Hence every cyclotomic polynomial is irreducible over .
Finally, direct multiplication givesAlsoApplying the cyclotomic factorization to the two factors on the right givesand thereforeSince , cancellation yieldsThe thirtieth cyclotomic polynomial is irreducible over by the theorem just proved, so is irreducible.