The determination of integral closures and geometric applications (Q596604)

A finite extension \(R[\alpha]\) of a UFD \(R\) is called a Bring-Jerrard extension (a B-J extension) if \(\alpha\) is the root of an irreducible polynomial of the form \(z^n+sz+t\in R[z]\). The aim of this paper is to calculate explicitely the integral closure of a B-J extension and of some extensions of degree 4 and 5 (an explicit expression is known only for extensions of degree \(\leq 3\)). In this paper, \(R\) is assumed to be a noetherian UFD containing a field whose characteristic is coprime to \(n\) and \(n-1\) and \(A=R[\alpha]\) is an extension of \(R\) of degree \(n\). When \(A\) is a B-J extension, the discriminant, the ramification divisor and the integral closure of \(A\) are computed. For extensions \(A\) of degree \(4\) or \(5\) and some conditions on the characteristic, the authors calculate the integral closure of \(A\) by reducing \(A\) to a type B-J extension, using Tschirnhaus transformation. In the last section, the computation of the integral closure is applied to algebraic geometry. The structure sheaf of every Bring-Jerrard covering space is determined explicitely in terms of coefficients of the equation defining the covering. A geometric criterion for a finite morphism of degree 3 to be Galois is also gotten and a partial result for the case of degree 5 is proved.