Tower of the maximal abelian extensions of local fields and its application (Q1016516)

The main goal of this paper is the study of the algebraic structure of principal units in the tower of maximal extensions of local fields of characteristic \(0\) and the corresponding Galois groups at each level. Local class field theory gives an explicit description of the Galois groups of abelian extensions of local fields in terms of the ground field. Since the Galois groups of local fields are solvable, one may study the groups of local fields by means of abelian filters. This work can be considered as a continuation of the papers of \textit{H. Koch} and \textit{E. de Shalit} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 478, 85--106 (1996; Zbl 0858.11061)] and of \textit{I. Fesenko} [Adv. Stud. Pure Math. 30, 63--78 (2001; Zbl 1039.11085)] with a difference: the authors study the dual of the Galois group. The advantage of this method is that one only needs to find the algebraic structure of the principal units of infinite extensions by means of Galois cohomology and then recover the Galois group by means of Kummer theory. Another motivation is the study of the coverings of the maximal abelian extensions of local fields. As an application, the authors show the finiteness theorem for the coverings of the maximal abelian extensions of local fields. Let \(K\) be a finite extension of the field of \(p\)-adic numbers \({\mathbb Q}_ p\), \(K^{(0)}=K\) and \(K^{(n)}\) denotes the maximal abelian extension of \(K^{(n-1)}\), \(n\geq 1\). Then \(\bar{K}:=\bigcup_{n\geq 1}K^{(n)}\) is an algebraic closure of \(K\). The tame extensions contained in \(K^{(2)}\) are studied in Section 2. It is proved that for any \(m\in {\mathbb N}\), relatively prime to \(p\), there exists a unique field \(K^{(1)}_ m\) such that \([K^{(1)}_ m:K^{(1)}]=m\) and in fact \(K^{(1)}_ m =K^{(1)}\Big(\root m \of {\pi_ K^ {1/(q-1)}}\Big)\) where \(\pi _ K\) is a prime element of \(K\). As a consequence, it follows that the number of extensions of a field \(F\subseteq \bar{K}\) of degree \(m\) with \(m\) relatively prime to \(p\) is bounded by \(\sigma_ 2(m)\), the sum of squares of all positive divisors of \(m\). The metabelian case is considered in Section 3. It is proved that if \(E\) is an extension of \(K\) then the quotient \(J_ E:= (1+P_ E)/ (\mu_ {p^ \infty}\cap E)\) is a free \({\mathbb Z}_ p\)-module and it is of countable infinite rank if and only if \([E:K]=\infty\), where \(P_ E\) is the maximal ideal of the ring of integers of \(E\) and \(\mu_{p^{\infty}}:= \lim_{\rightarrow}\mu_{p^ k}\) with \(\mu_{p^ k}\) denoting the group of \(p^ k\)-roots of unity. The higher level cases \(K^{(n)}\), \(n\geq 3\) are studied in Section 4. There, it is proved that if \(F/K\) is a Galois extension with \(F\supseteq K(\mu_{p^{\infty}})\) and \(E/F\) is a nontrivial abelian extension, then \((1+P_ E)/\tau_{E/F}\) is a free \({\mathbb Z}_ p\)-module of countable infinite rank, where \(\tau_ {E/F}:=\{x\in(1+P_ E)\mid x^{p^ m}\in (1+P_ K) \text{ for some } m \in {\mathbb N}\}\). In Section 5, the authors obtain that if \(E/K\) is abelian, then the number of \(k\)-coverings of \(E\) with respect to \(K\) is finite for any \(k\in{\mathbb N}\). In the last section two explicit computations are given. It is shown that the number of \(p\)-coverings of \({\mathbb Q}_ p(\mu_{ p^ {\infty}})\) with respect to \({\mathbb Q}_ p\) is \(2p-1\) and the number of \(p\)-coverings of \({\mathbb Q}^{(1)}_ p\) with respect to \({\mathbb Q}_ p\) is \((p-1)(2p-1)\) for \(p>2\) and \(7\) for \(p=2\).