Field theory and the cohomology of some Galois groups (Q5925846)

The main objects of the paper under review are Galois groups of certain arithmetically significant extensions of an arbitrary field \(F\) of characteristic \(\neq 2\). Using Galois cohomology, the authors derive some field-theoretic information. First, the authors define \(F^{(2)}\) as the field obtained by adjoining all the square roots of elements of \(F\) and then introduce two extensions: by definition, \(F^{\{3\}}={(F^{(2)})}^{(2)}\) and \(F^{(3)}\) is the extension of \(F^{(2)}\) obtained by adjoining the square roots of elements \(\alpha\in F^{(2)}\) such that \(F^{(2)}(\sqrt{\alpha })\) is Galois over \(F\). The first result states that \(F^{\{3\}}=F^{(3)}\) if and only if the Witt ring \(WF\) is isomorphic to a group ring of the form \(\mathbb Z/n\mathbb Z[G]\). Second, a length invariant of \(F\) is introduced as follows. Let \(J=F^{(2)}/(F^{(2)})^2\) regarded as a \(\text{Gal}(F^{(2)}/F)\)-module. If the square class group of \(F\) is finite then the socle series of \(J\), \[ 0=J_0\subset J_1\subset J_2\subset\dots\subset J_l=J, \] has finite length \(l=l(F)\). The authors establish an identity (valid for many interesting classes of fields) linking \(l(F)\), the cohomological dimension of the Galois group of the quadratic closure of \(F\), and the dimension over \({\mathbb F}_2\) of the square class group fo \(F\). Yet another result of the paper is an analogue of Hilbert's Theorem 90 for the second differential in the mod 2 Lyndon-Hochschild--Serre spectral sequence associated to \(\text{Gal}(F^{(2)}/F)\). Finally, the authors present results of computer-aided calculation of the cohomology of a particular 2-group and some applications to topology.