Noether's problem for dihedral 2-groups (Q1424243)

Let \(K\) be a field and \(G\) be a finite group. Let \(G\) act on the rational field \(K(x_g\,:\,g\in G)\) via \(g\cdot x_h = x_{gh}\) for any \(g,h\in G\), and denote by \(K(G)\) the fixed field of this action. Noether's problem asks whether \(K(G)\) is purely transcendental over \(K\). The authors show that this is the case when \(K\) is an arbitrary field and \(G\) is any semidirect product of a cyclic group of order 8 and a cyclic group of order 2 (the dihedral, the quasi-dihedral and the modular group of order 16). As a consequence, there exist the generic Galois extension and the generic polynomial for these groups.