In the square-class group of a p-adic field, the unit subgroup consists of classes of even valuation. The unramified subgroup consists of the trivial class and the unique nonsquare class defining an unramified extension of degree two. For odd , the two subgroups coincide with for a nonsquare unit . For , they are and . Norms from an unramified quadratic local field extension have even valuation, and every unit is a norm. The norm characterization of the quadratic Hilbert symbol therefore gives both displayed annihilator identities. Over , the unramified class is because satisfies , whose reduction modulo two is irreducible and separable.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 31 2 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A useful strong form of the Hensel lemma is the following. Let be a complete discretely valued field, with valuation ring , normalized valuation , and . If satisfiesthen there is a unique root in the ball . When the assertion is immediate; otherwise the condition includes .
Here is a proof by Newton iteration over a valued field. Write and , and setSuppose and . The correction has valuation , so . Taylor expansion over cancels the linear term and givesThus the derivative still has valuation , and . Unless an exact root is reached earlier, the corrections tend to zero with exponentially increasing valuations. Completeness gives , and continuity gives and . For uniqueness, if are in this ball, polynomial expansion around givesThe second factor has valuation exactly and is nonzero, so two roots in the ball must be equal. In particular, a simple residue root lifts uniquely: and satisfy the hypothesis.
For the square-class group of a p-adic field, write every element as with . Multiplication by a square changes by an even integer, so valuation parity gives one independent factor .
For odd , a unit is a square if and only if its residue is a square in . Necessity follows by reduction; sufficiency applies the simple-root Hensel lemma to , whose derivative is a unit at a nonzero residue root. The cyclic group has square subgroup of index two. If is a unit with nonsquare residue, thenFor , every odd square is one modulo eight. Conversely, if , take and . Then , so the strong Hensel lemma gives a square root. Thus unit square classes are exactly their residues modulo eight. The classes and generate this group of order four independently, and valuation parity supplies the class . Hence