On the number of ramified primes in specializations of function fields over \(\mathbb Q\) (Q1622869)

The study of specializations of finite Galois extensions of \({\mathbb Q}(T)\) is mainly motivated by the inverse Galois problem. A way to obtain Galois extensions of \({\mathbb Q}\) with Galois group \(G\) is to specialize a Galois extension \(E/{\mathbb Q}(T)\) with Galois group \(G\). This is a consequence of the Hilbert irreducibility theorem, which implies that there are infinitely many natural numbers \(n\) such that the specialization \(E_n/{\mathbb Q}\) has Galois group \(G\). The paper under review studies the number of ramified prime numbers in finite Galois extensions of \({\mathbb Q}\) obtained by specializing a finite Galois extension of \({\mathbb Q}(T)\). Consider a finite Galois extension \(E/{\mathbb Q}(T)\) and \(n\) a natural number that is not a branch point. The authors consider \(\mathrm{Ram}_{E/{\mathbb Q}(T)}(n)\), the number of ramified prime numbers in the specialization \(E_n/{\mathbb Q}\). It is assumed that \(E\) is not of the form \(K(T)\). There are several known results on \(\mathrm{Ram}_{E/{\mathbb Q} (T)}\): it is unbounded and does not tend to \(\infty\), for instance, if \(G=S_N\) is the symmetric group, \(N\geq 3\), and some extension \(E/{\mathbb Q}\) has Galois group \(S_N\) with \(3\) branch points, then \(\mathrm{Ram}_{E/{\mathbb Q} (T)}(n)\leq 3\) for infinitely many \(n\). The main result is Theorem 1.3 that establishes that for each positive integer \(k\), we have \[ \lim_{N\to\infty}\frac {1}{N}\sum_{0<n\leq N} \Big(\frac{\mathrm{Ram}_{E/{\mathbb Q}(T)}(n)-r\log\log(N)}{\sqrt{r\log\log(N)}}\Big)^k=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}}\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}t^ke^{-\frac{t^2}{2}}\,dt \] where \(r\) is the number of orbits of the action of the absolute group of \({\mathbb Q}\) over the branch points of the extension \(E/{\mathbb Q}(T)\) lying in \(\bar{\mathbb Q}\), a fixed algebraic closure of \({\mathbb Q}\). By the method of moments, it is obtained that for any real number \(a\), we have \[ \lim_{N\to\infty}\frac {1}{N}\Big|\Big\{ 0<n\leq N \colon \frac{\mathrm{Ram}_{E/{\mathbb Q}(T)}(n)-r\log\log(N)}{\sqrt{r\log\log(N)}}\leq a \Big\}\Big|=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}}\int_{-\infty}^{a}e^{-\frac{t^2}{2}}\,dt. \] The proof of Theorem 1.3 is given in Section 4. For \(P_E(T)\in{\mathbb Z}[T]\) a separable polynomial whose roots are the finite branch points of \(E/{\mathbb Q}(T)\), let \(\omega(P_E(n))\) be the number of distinct prime numbers dividing \(P_E(n)\) (without multiplicity). The authors compute \(\mathrm{Ram}_{E/{\mathbb Q}(T)}(n)-\omega(P_E(n))\) up to \(O(1)\). Next, it is shown that for each positive integer \(k\), \[ \sum_{0<n\leq N} \big(\mathrm{Ram}_{E/{\mathbb Q} (T)}(n)-\omega(P_E(n))\big)^k=O(N)\] as \(N\) tends to \(\infty\). Finally, it is proved that \[ \lim_{N\to\infty}\frac {1}{N}\sum_{0<n\leq N} \Big(\frac{\omega(P_E(n))-r\log\log(N)}{\sqrt{r\log\log(N)}}\Big)^k=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}}\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}t^ke^{-\frac{t^2}{2}}\,dt \] and the proof of Theorem 1.3 is complete. Several applications of the main result to the inverse Galois problem are given in Section 3. In the last section, it is noticed that the results can be extended for arbitrary finite extensions of \({\mathbb Q}(T)\), not necessarily Galois.