Infinite families of irregular primes in cyclotomic function fields (Q2329259)

Let \(k={\mathbb F}_q(T)\) be a global rational function field of characteristic \(p\) and let \(k(\Lambda_f)\) be the \(f\)-th cyclotomic function field. An irreducible polynomial \(f\in{\mathbb F}_q[T]\) is called an \textit{irregular prime} if \(p\) divides the divisor class number \(h(k(\Lambda_f)^+)\) of the real subfield of \(k(\Lambda_f)\). Let \(Cl_f\) be the divisor class group of \(k(\Lambda_f)\) and let \(J_f\) be the Jacobian of \(k(\Lambda_f){\bar{\mathbb F}_q}\). Then the \(p\)-rank \(\lambda_f\) of \(J_f\) satisfies \(0\leq \lambda_f\leq g_f\) where \(g_f\) denotes the genus of \(k(\Lambda_f)\). One of the objectives of the authors is to find cyclotomic function fields such that \(Cl_f\) contains either \(({\mathbb Z}/ p{\mathbb Z})^m\) or \(({\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z})\oplus ({\mathbb Z}/l{\mathbb Z})\) for large \(m\) and \(l\) a prime number other than \(p\). They also study lower and upper bounds on the \(p\)-rank of \(Cl_f\) and of \(\lambda_f\), where \(f\in {\mathbb F}_q[T]\) is an irreducible polynomial. The lower bound is found using the notion of power sums analogue to Bernoulli numbers. The upper bound of the \(p\)-rank of the divisor class group \(Cl_f\) and \(\lambda_f\) are found in Theorems 2.5 and 4.8 respectively. Furthermore, the authors find two types of infinite families of irregular primes \(f\) for which the divisor class number of \(k(\Lambda_f)^+\) is divisible by \(N\), where \(N=p^{p(p-1)}\) for the first family and \(N=(pl)^5\) for the second family and \(l\) is a prime number \(l\neq p\). This is the content of Theorems 3.6 and 3.15 respectively. In the former case it is obtained that the \(p\)-rank of the divisor class group of \(k(\Lambda_f)^+\) is at least \(p(p-1)\).