Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 3 18I c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
The cyclotomic polynomial iswhere is primitive. Partitioning all th roots by exact order gives the cyclotomic factorizationInduct on . The quotient of the monic integer polynomial by the product of the already constructed monic , , lies in and is monic. Gauss lemma then shows that this quotient lies in .
If the prime does not divide , then over ,Thus has no repeated root. Every factor, including the reduction of , is square-free, proving the Separability of a cyclotomic polynomial modulo p.