The minimum discriminant of number fields of degree 8 and signature \((2,3)\) (Q1710774): Difference between revisions

Let \(d_K\) be the discriminant of a number field \(K\). An important problem in computational number theory is to write a complete list of number fields of absolute degree \(n\) and discriminant bounded by some constant and, in particular, to find the minimal value of \(|d_K|\), where \(K\) ranges over all number fields of absolute degree \(n\). For \(n\leq 7\) the minimal discriminants are known, while for \(n=8\) they are known only under the assumption that \(K\) is either totally real or totally imaginary, or if \(K\) is non-primitive, i.e., if it admits some subfields different from \(\mathbb Q\) and \(K\) itself. The paper under review addresses the case of signature \((2,3)\), where by the results mentioned above it is enough to consider only primitive number fields. The main results proved by the author are that the minimum value for \(|d_K|\) is \(4286875\) and that there are exactly \(56\) number fields of degree \(8\) and signature \((2,3)\) with \(|d_K|\leq 5726300\). A complete list of those fields can be found on the author's home page \url{http://www.mat.unimi.it/users/battistoni/tablepage.html}. The algorithm used in the paper involves going through all polynomials of degree \(8\) with some bounds on the coefficients and arguing that for the relevant number fields there are no prime ideals whose norm is between \(2\) and \(5\). The computations have been done using Matlab and PARI/GP.