On bases of Washington's group of circular units of some real cyclic number fields (Q2436765)

Let \(F\) be an abelian extension of \(\mathbb Q\) and let \(E(F)\) be the unit group of the ring of integers of \(F\). In [Invent. Math. 62, 181--234 (1980; Zbl 0465.12001)], \textit{W. Sinnott} defined the group \(C_S(F)\) of circular units in terms of norms from cyclotomic fields. The reviewer [Introduction to cyclotomic fields. 2nd ed. Graduate Texts in Mathematics. 83. New York, NY: Springer. (1997; Zbl 0966.11047)] defined a group of units, denoted in the present paper by \(C_W(F)\), as the intersection with \(F\) of the circular units of a cyclotomic field containing \(F\). The units \(C_S(F)\) are much better understood that \(C_W(F)\). The current paper considers the case where \(F/\mathbb Q\) is a cyclic extension of degree \(\ell\) contained in a compositum of a set of prime-power real cyclotomic fields such that every ramified prime is totally ramified. The main result is the construction of a \(\mathbb Z\)-basis of \(C_W(F)\). A consequence is that \([C_W(F) : C_S(F)] = \ell^{s-2} 2^{\ell -1} \tilde{d}\), where \(s\) is the number of ramified primes in \(F/\mathbb Q\) and \(\tilde{d}\) is an explicitly described integer. This implies that \(\ell^{s-1} \tilde{d}\) divides the class number of \(F\).