The relative class numbers of certain imaginary abelian number fields and determinants (Q909710)

Let p be an odd prime, \(r=(p-1)/2\) and for an integer a let \(R'(a)\) denote an integer with \(-r\leq R'(a)\leq r\) and \(R'(a)\equiv a\) (mod p). Put \(S(a)=\) \((-1)^{R'(a)}\), \(T(a)=\) \((-1)^{R'(a)/2}\) if \(R'(a)\) is even, and \(T(a)=0\) otherwise, \(U(a)=\) \((-1)^{(R'(a)-1)/2}\) if \(R'(a)\) is odd, and \(U(a)=0\) otherwise. Define the following determinants: \(D'_ p=\det (R'(ab'))\), \(S_ p=\det (S(ab'))\), \(T_ p=\det (T(ab'))\) and \(U_ p=\det (U(ab'))\) (1\(\leq a,b\leq r)\), where \(b'\) means an integer with the property \(bb'\equiv 1\) (mod p). These determinants are similar to Mailet's determinant \(D_ p\), the absolute value of which was computed by \textit{L. Carlitz} and \textit{F. R. Olson} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 6, 265-269 (1955; Zbl 0065.027)]. In this paper the author computes (Theorem 1) the absolute values of \(D_ p'S_ p\), \(D_ p'T_ p\), \(D_ p'U_ p\) by means of the relative class numbers \(h^-_{p,m}\) of \({\mathbb{Q}}(\xi_ p, \sqrt{m})\) \((m=\)-1,-2,2), where \(\xi_ p\) means a primitive pth root of unity. In Theorems 2, 3, 4 the conditions for divisibility of \(S_ p\), \(T_ p\) and \(U_ p\) by p are given by means of the notion of \(\chi\)-irregularity of p in the sense of \textit{R. Ernvall} [Ann. Univ. Turku, Ser. A I 178, 72 p. (1979; Zbl 0403.12010)] for special Dirichlet characters \(\chi\).