Cyclotomic function fields with ideal class number one (Q5929456)

A congruence function field is a function field whose field of constants is the finite field of \(q\) elements \(\mathbb{F}_q\). A congruence function field \(K/\mathbb{F}_q\) is an imaginary quadratic extension of \(\mathbb{F}_q(x)\) if \(K/\mathbb{F}_q(x)\) is a quadratic separable extension of non-zero genus such that the infinite prime are ramified. \textit{R. E. MacRae} [J. Algebra 17, 243-261 (1971; Zbl 0212.53302)] proved that there are only four imaginary quadratic extensions \(K\) of \(\mathbb{F}_q (x)\) of divisor class number one. \textit{M. L. Madan} and \textit{C. S. Queen} [Acta Arith. 20, 423-432 (1972; Zbl 0237.12007), and with \textit{J. R. C. Leitzel}, J. Number Theory 7, 11-27 (1975; Zbl 0318.12009)] generalized MacRae's result and proved that, up to isomorphism, there are seven congruence function fields of divisor class number one and genus different from zero. For a congruence function field and for a non-empty finite set of places \(S\) of \(K\), the ideal class number \(h _S\) is defined as the class number of the Dedekind domain \({\mathcal O} _S =\bigcap _{P\not\in S} {\mathcal O} _P\) where \({\mathcal O} _P = \{z\in K\mid v _P(z) \geq 0\}\). If \(h _K\) denotes the divisor class number of \(K\), then \(h _K\) and \(h _S\) are related by the formula of F. K. Schmidt: \(\delta _S h_K = r_S h _S\) where \(\delta _S = \gcd \{\deg P \mid P\in S\}\) and \(r_S\) is the regulator. Now, let \(k = \mathbb{F}_q(x)\) be a rational congruence function field. Let \(k(\Lambda _M)/k\) be the cyclotomic function field extension associated with the polynomial \(M\in \mathbb{F}_q[x]\). The author determines the imaginary cyclotomic function fields that have ideal class number one. The result is that, apart from the zero genus ones, there are 17 cyclotomic function fields of class number one; 13 of them are defined over \(\mathbb{F}_3\) and the remaining 4 are defined over \(\mathbb{F}_4\). The case of cyclotomic function fields of divisor class one was settled by \textit{M. Kida} and \textit{N. Murabayashi} [Tokyo J. Math. 14, No. 1, 45-56 (1991; Zbl 0734.11060)]. The organization of the paper is as follows. Sections 1 and 2 study class numbers of function fields of totally imaginary extensions, and in Section 3 some bounds for the divisor class numbers are given. Section 4 recalls basic results about cyclotomic function fields. The main result is proved in Section 5 in case \(M\) is the power of an irreducible polynomial and for general \(M\) in Section~6.