Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 28 3 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Reduce to . Because , the multiplication-by-n morphism on the reduced elliptic curve is a separable, surjective morphism of degree . Choose a point with . Its coordinates lie in some finite field .
Let be the finite unramified extension with residue field . The curve retains good reduction over . Its smooth integral model and the Hensel lemma give surjectivity of good reduction over a local field, so lift to some . This lift need not satisfy exactly, but its errorhas zero reduction and belongs to , the kernel of reduction of an elliptic curve.
The parameter at infinity identifies with the maximal ideal equipped with the formal group of an elliptic curve. The integral power series for and its inverse from part (i) remain integral over . They converge on : terms of degree tend to zero in valuation because their coefficients are integral and the argument has positive valuation. Hence multiplication by is bijective on . Choose its unique solution to , and put . ThenThe residue-field extension supplies a division point modulo , and the formal-group inverse corrects the error without introducing ramification. This is the local construction underlying the uniform unramified division field over a local field and unramified division torsors at good primes.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 125 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Let be the maximal unramified extension of , with residue field . First show that every geometric solution of lies in .
The multiplication-by-n morphism on the reduced elliptic curve is surjective over . Choose with , defined over some finite finite field extension . Let be the corresponding finite unramified extension. By the surjectivity of good reduction over a local field, lift to . Then . The multiplication isomorphism of a formal group law gives a unique with , so is an -division point of defined over .
Taking gives every element of over : reduction is injective on this torsion point of an elliptic curve group because is injective on the formal kernel, and each reduced -torsion point has the unique corrected lift just constructed. Every other division point differs from one lift by an element of . Hence the entire field is unramified, not merely a field containing one choice of .
To bound the composite uniformly in , put . This division field of an elliptic curve is unramified. The Galois group of is procyclic, generated topologically by its Frobenius element , and fixes every element of . If , thenIteration gives . In particular . Thus every such , for every together, lies in the unique unramified extension of degree . If is the composite of all these fields, the uniform unramified division field over a local field givesThe prime-to- hypothesis is essential to the inverse-series argument; no assertion about arbitrary -division is being made.