The actions on the ordered pair satisfy
Thus every element of has the form or for , so . Their actions are
Because are algebraically independent elements over , these eight substitutions are distinct. Hence
and the presentation identifies with the dihedral group .
Put
Both generators and fix and , so for ,
The elements and are the two roots of
so . Adjoining first and then takes at most two quadratic extensions, and the tower law gives
Part (b) gives . Since , another use of the tower law gives
All inequalities are equalities and . Therefore
the dihedral fixed field of a two-variable rational function field.
The products with and span the field compositum over , so
The tower law gives
Thus the degree is divisible by both and . Since they are coprime, it is divisible by . Combining divisibility with the upper bound gives
Equivalently, finite extensions of coprime degrees are linearly disjoint field extensions.
Suppose, for a contradiction, that suitable nonzero polynomials vanish at both and . If , then the primitive minimal polynomial divides . The multiplicativity of Mahler measure and the Mahler measure bounded by polynomial length give
If , then, using , this inequality contradicts . Hence is a proper intermediate field of . Its degree divides the prime by the tower law, so . Applying the same argument to is even stronger and gives . Since ,
contrary to . At least one of the two proposed values of therefore has no such polynomial relation.