Perfect Fields (Q7361408)

This entry provides a type class for perfect fields . A perfect field K can be characterized by one of the following equivalent conditions: Any irreducible polynomial p is separable, i.e. gcd(p,p') = 1 , or, equivalently, p' non-zero. Either the characteristic of K is 0 or p > 0 and the Frobenius endomorphism is surjective (i.e. every element of K has a p -th root). We define perfect fields using the second characterization and show the equivalence to the first characterization. The implication ``2 => 1'' is relatively straightforward using the injectivity of the Frobenius homomorphism. Examples for perfect fields are: any field of characteristic 0 (e.g. the reals or complex numbers) any finite field (i.e. F q for q=p n , n > 0 and p prime) any algebraically closed field