Class numbers of large degree nonabelian number fields

By Kwang-Seob Kim and John C. Miller

Abstract

If a number field has a large degree and discriminant, the computation of the class number becomes quite difficult, especially without the assumption of GRH. In this article, we will unconditionally show that a certain nonabelian number field of degree 120 has class number one. This field is the unique extension of the rationals that is ramified only at 653 with ramification index 2. It is the largest degree number field unconditionally proven to have class number 1.

The proof uses the algorithm of Guàrdia, Montes, and Nart to calculate an integral basis and then finds integral elements of small prime power norm to establish an upper bound for the class number; further algebraic arguments prove the class number is 1. It is possible to apply these techniques to other nonabelian number fields as well.

1. Introduction

One of the problems of algebraic number theory is to get deep knowledge of the Galois groups of various Galois extensions of number fields, especially maximal extensions of number fields with restricted ramification. Such Galois groups can be regarded as étale fundamental groups of spectra of algebraic integer rings punctured at some closed points, and they play essential roles for understanding the arithmetic of number fields, analogous to the role geometric fundamental groups of manifolds do in geometry. In other words, the étale fundamental group of the ring of integers of a number field is isomorphic to , where is the maximal extension of which is unramified over all finite places. This is one of the motivations for the study of unramified extensions of number fields and their Galois groups. In general, one can know the abelianizations of the étale fundamental group by examining the ideal class group of . Yamamura’s results Reference 17 tell us that , where the ’s are imaginary quadratic fields with absolute discriminant and is the top of the class field tower of . Hence we can find examples of abelian or solvable étale fundamental groups.

However, one can get little information on the structure of itself via class field theory, especially in the case where is a nonabelian simple group.

The first author has previously Reference 9 given an example of with under the assumption of the generalized Riemann hypothesis (GRH). Let be a quadratic number field and let be a splitting field of

a polynomial that has complex roots. The field is an -extension of and is the only prime ramified in this field, with ramification index two Reference 3, p. 21. Moreover, is the unique such field Reference 1.

By Abhyankar’s lemma, the compositum is an extension of which is unramified over all finite places, and is the unique extension of ramified only at 653 with ramification index 2. Under the assumption of GRH, the first author proved Reference 9 that the class number of is 1 and futhermore that .

We have the following natural question: Is it possible to show that without assuming GRH, thereby proving unconditionally the existence of a non-solvable étale fundamental group?

To do this, the first step is to unconditionally prove that has class number one. If a number field has a large degree and discriminant, the computation of the class number becomes quite difficult. The Minkowski bound is too large to be useful, and the root discriminant of is too large to be treated by Odlyzko’s unconditional discriminant bounds. However, the second author showed Reference 12 that by finding nontrivial lower bounds for sums over prime ideals of the Hilbert class field, upper bounds can be established for class numbers of fields of larger discriminant.

In this paper, we unconditionally prove that has class number 1. In fact, has degree 120, and it is the largest degree number field proven unconditionally to have class number 1. Previously, among such fields, the one with largest degree, the real cyclotomic field of conductor 151, has degree 75 Reference 13.

Theorem 1.1.

The unique extension of ramified only at with ramification index has class number .

2. Remark on the maximal unramified extension of

The first author proved Reference 9 that if the class number of is less than 16, then the class number of is 1. Using discriminant lower bounds, it was further proved, under the assumption of GRH, that the class number of is indeed less than 16 (and therefore is 1), and also that the maximal unramified extension of is .

Theorem 2.1 (Main theorem of Reference 9).

Let be a real quadratic field with narrow class number , where is a prime congruent to and . Suppose that there exists a totally imaginary -extension over and is the only prime ramified in this field with ramification index . If , then the class number of is one and

( is defined as an infimum of over all number fields satisfying and (resp. ), where (resp. ) is the number of real (resp. complex) places of a number field .)

In , the number represents

In particular, the proof of Theorem 2.1 has the following consequence.

Corollary 1.

With the notation and conditions the same as above, if the class number of is smaller than , then the class number of is exactly one.

Here we briefly sketch the main elements of the proof, the details of which are given in Reference 9.

Proof.

Let denote the Hilbert class field of , and let denote the Hilbert -class field for a prime . Every automorphism group of an abelian group of order less than 16 does not contain a subgroup isomorphic to , so is a central extension of by . If is odd, has a nontrivial abelian quotient Reference 9, Cor. 2.2, contradicting that the narrow class number of is 1. Thus the -class group of is trivial for odd .

Similarly, has a nontrivial abelian quotient if has order greater than 2 Reference 9, Cor. 2.3. Also, if is trivial, then we are done. Otherwise, we have is isomorphic to or Reference 9, Cor. 2.3. However, cannot be isomorphic to because has narrow class number 1. Finally, it has been shown Reference 9, pp. 116–118 that also leads to a contradiction.

To prove unconditionally that has class number 1, it remains to show that the class number is less than 16.

3. Upper bounds on class numbers of totally complex fields

The root discriminant of is approximately 25.5539. If we assume the generalized Riemann hypothesis, we can use discriminant lower bounds Reference 11Reference 14 to show that any totally complex field with degree 480 or larger must have root discriminant larger than 26.48. But the root discriminant of is equal to the root discriminant of its Hilbert class field, so under GRH the class number of must be less than .

However, without the assumption of GRH, this method fails for totally complex fields with root discriminant above . To make further progress, we must find another approach that can handle large root discriminants. Such a method was introduced in Reference 12 for totally real fields. By finding sufficiently many integral elements with small prime norm, an upper bound for class numbers could be established even for fields of large discriminant.

We prove a similar result for totally complex fields.

Theorem 3.1.

Let be a totally complex Galois number field of degree , and let

for some positive constant . Suppose is a subset of the prime integers which are unramified in and factor into principal prime ideals of of degree . Let

where is Euler’s constant. If , then we have an upper bound for the class number of ,

Proof.

The proof is a modification of the argument in Reference 12. We apply Poitou’s version Reference 15 of Weil’s “explicit formula” for the Dedekind zeta function of the Hilbert class field of :

where is Euler’s constant and since is totally complex. The first sum is over the nontrivial zeros of the Dedekind zeta function of , the second sum is over the prime ideals of , and is defined by

By our choice of , the real part of is nonnegative everywhere in the critical strip. Indeed, on the boundary of the critical strip, the real part

is positive, and as , so by the maximum modulus principle for harmonic functions, cannot be negative anywhere in the critical strip.

Since the root discriminant of equals the root discriminant of , we have

and also

We therefore get the expression

We rearrange this to get the identity

where

To get an upper bound for the class number , we need to bound from below the sum over the zeros and the sum over the primes. The sum over the critical zeros is nonnegative since the real part of is nonnegative on the critical strip. We note that principal ideals in totally split in the Hilbert class field of . To find a nontrivial lower bound for the sum over prime ideals of the Hilbert class field, we consider the contribution of the prime ideals of degree that lie over some unramified rational prime :

Summing this contribution over an arbitrary set of unramified primes gives a lower bound for the sum over the prime ideals, proving the theorem.

4. An integral basis for

In order to apply Theorem 3.1, we must find sufficiently many integral elements of small prime power norm. To do this, we first must compute a basis of the ring of integers of .

In general, it is difficult to compute an integral basis for a number field with such large degree and takes an unfeasibly long time using the commonly implemented algorithms. Fortunately, Jordi Guàrdia, Jesús Montes, and Enric Nart studied and recently implemented an algorithm that allows for fast computation of an integral basis. (The detailed algorithms are described in Reference 4, Reference 5, and Reference 6.) The “Montes package” is available at their homepage Reference 7.

To use the Montes package, we must find a polynomial defining our field . From the work of Basmaji and Kiming Reference 1, it is known that there is a unique -extension of which is ramified only at with ramification index , and so there is a unique -extension of ramified only at with ramification index . We can also check that the splitting field of

(see Reference 8) is an -extension of , and ramified only at with ramification two. Therefore the splitting field of Equation 4.1 is isomorphic to , and we find that the defining polynomial of the splitting field has reasonably-sized coefficients.

The polynomial is too long to write here. Instead, we upload this polynomial in a file with the arXiv submission of this paper.

Now let be a zero of the polynomial , i.e., . We can get an integral basis

for by using the Montes package and Magma software, where each . The basis is included as an ancillary file with the arXiv submission of this paper.

4.1. Finding a better integral basis for

Let be the 60 conjugate pairs of embeddings of into the complex numbers. We have the usual embedding of into ,

Under this map, the ring of integers is embedded as a lattice in .

In order to find an upper bound for the class number of , we must find sufficiently many integral elements with small multiplicative norm. For this purpose, we desire a “nice” integral basis for . We thereby encounter the classical problem of lattice basis reduction. We can apply the Lenstra-Lenstra-Lovász (LLL) algorithm Reference 10. Then we applied the LLL-algorithm repeatedly (in fact, 279 times) until we obtained another basis

that has sufficiently short . The inverse of change of basis matrix to get from to can be found as an ancillary file with the arXiv submission of this paper.

5. Finding elements of with small multiplicative norm

Our next step is to find integral elements of our number field with small multiplicative norm. Then we can apply the theorem from Reference 12 to establish an upper bound for the class number. To find such elements of small norm, we will search over “sparse” vectors, i.e., vectors where almost all the coefficients are zero with respect to the basis .

Table 1 lists the elements of small prime norm that are found by searching over “sparse” vectors. These prime integers generate principal ideals which totally split in into 120 principal prime ideals, each of which is generated by the given element or one of its Galois conjugates. Therefore we can include the primes given in Table 1 as degree 1 primes in the set used by Theorem 3.1.

Table 2 lists some elements which have norms of small prime power. Each of these primes can be included in the set as degree 2 primes, except for 11 which is included as degree 3. However, we have still not found enough principal prime ideals to establish a sufficiently strong upper bound for the class number of . Table 3 lists some integral elements and their norms. Consider, for example, the element , which has norm . Since we also know that generates a degree 2 prime ideal of norm , we can divide by the appropriate Galois conjugate of to find an integral element of norm . Since does not totally split in , we know that factors into degree 2 principal prime ideals. By this way, we can show that the following primes totally split in into degree 1 principal prime ideals:

6. An upper bound for the class number of

We are now in a position to prove our main result by applying Theorem 3.1 and Corollary 1.

Proof of Theorem 1.1.

By searching for elements of small norm, and taking quotients where necessary, we find a number of primes that can be included in the set of unramified primes that factor into principal prime ideals. In particular, the following 36 primes totally split into degree 1 principal primes in :

Also, the following 11 primes factor into degree 2 principal primes in :

Finally, the following three primes factor into degree 3 principal primes in :

If we include these primes in our set and set , we find that

We can numerically calculate the integral and find that

Since the root discriminant of is , we have

Therefore, by Theorem 3.1, we get an upper bound for the class number of :

Since the class number is an integer, we determine that

Applying Corollary 1, we conclude that the class number of is 1.

7. Summary of results and concluding remarks

We have shown unconditionally that the class number of is 1. Thus we know that does not have any solvable unramified extensions. To prove unconditionally that the étale fundamental group of is , the remaining task is to show that does not have a nonabelian simple unramified extension.

How might we rule out such nonabelian simple unramified extensions? There are at least two possible approaches: One is to gain sufficient knowledge of the prime ideals of the unramified extension in order to bound the degree of the extension, similar to our approach for bounding the degree of Hilbert class field. But this is difficult: We do not have access to a class field theory for nonabelian extensions as we have in the abelian case. A possible alternative approach may be to use the theory of Galois representations to attempt to rule out possible nonabelian unramified extensions of .

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Takeshi Tsuji and Hiroki Takahashi, the organizers of the 2014 RIMS Workshop on Algebraic Number Theory where the authors had the opportunity to be introduced.

Figures

Table 1.

Generators of some small degree 1 primes in

ElementNorm
ElementNorm
Table 2.

Generators of some small degree 2 and degree 3 primes in

ElementNorm
ElementNorm
Table 3.

Generators of some composite ideals in

Element Norm
Element Norm

Mathematical Fragments

Theorem 1.1.

The unique extension of ramified only at with ramification index has class number .

Theorem 2.1 (Main theorem of Reference 9).

Let be a real quadratic field with narrow class number , where is a prime congruent to and . Suppose that there exists a totally imaginary -extension over and is the only prime ramified in this field with ramification index . If , then the class number of is one and

( is defined as an infimum of over all number fields satisfying and (resp. ), where (resp. ) is the number of real (resp. complex) places of a number field .)

Corollary 1.

With the notation and conditions the same as above, if the class number of is smaller than , then the class number of is exactly one.

Theorem 3.1.

Let be a totally complex Galois number field of degree , and let

for some positive constant . Suppose is a subset of the prime integers which are unramified in and factor into principal prime ideals of of degree . Let

where is Euler’s constant. If , then we have an upper bound for the class number of ,

Equation (4.1)

References

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Article Information

MSC 2010
Primary: 11R29 (Class numbers, class groups, discriminants)
Secondary: 11Y40 (Algebraic number theory computations)
Author Information
Kwang-Seob Kim
Department of Mathematics, Chosun Univeristy, Gwangju 501-759, Korea
kwang12@chosun.ac.kr
MathSciNet
John C. Miller
Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Johns Hopkins University, 100 Whitehead Hall, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218
jmill268@jhu.edu
MathSciNet
Journal Information
Mathematics of Computation, Volume 88, Issue 316, ISSN 1088-6842, published by the American Mathematical Society, Providence, Rhode Island.
Publication History
This article was received on , revised on , , , and published on .
Copyright Information
Copyright 2018 American Mathematical Society
Article References
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  • DOI 10.1090/mcom/3335
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  • Show rawAMSref \bib{3882291}{article}{ author={Kim, Kwang-Seob}, author={Miller, John}, title={Class numbers of large degree nonabelian number fields}, journal={Math. Comp.}, volume={88}, number={316}, date={2019-03}, pages={973-981}, issn={0025-5718}, review={3882291}, doi={10.1090/mcom/3335}, }

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