Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 34

The set of all algebraic numbers forms a field.

This field contains all of the rational numbers, but it is a quadratically closed field.

Like the rationals, this field also has the same cardinality as the natural numbers, because we can specify and enumerate each of its members by a fixed number of integers from the polynomial equation that defines them. So it is a bit like the rationals, but we use potentially arbitrary numbers of integers to specify each number (polynomial coefficients + index of which root we are talking about) instead of just always two as for the rationals.

Each algebraic number also has a degree associated to it, i.e. the degree of the polynomial used to define it.

A ring where multiplication is commutative and there is always an inverse.

A field can be seen as an Abelian group that has two group operations defined on it: addition and multiplication.

And then, besides each of the two operations obeying the group axioms individually, and they are compatible between themselves according to the distributive property.

Basically the nicest, least restrictive, 2-operation type of algebra.

Examples:

This construction takes as input:and it produces an elliptic curve over a finite field of order $p$ as output.

The constructions is used in the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.

To do it, we just convert the coefficients $a$ and $b$ from the Equation "Definition of the elliptic curves" from rational numbers to elements of the finite field.

For example, suppose we have $a=3/4$ and we are using $p=11$.

For the denominator $4$, we just use the multiplicative inverse, e.g. supposing we havewhere $4^{-1}=3\mathrm{m}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{d}11$ because $4\times 3=1\mathrm{m}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{d}11$, related: math.stackexchange.com/questions/1204034/elliptic-curve-reduction-modulo-p