Rational Coates-Wiles series (Q793092)

This article studies Coates-Wiles (CW) series and establishes a relationship between these series and the Iwasawa invariant \(\lambda^+\) of the \({\mathbb{Z}}_ p\)-extension of the maximum real subfield of the p-th cyclotomic field. The first part of the paper gives a simple characterization of rational CW series as a finite product of linear terms, by describing their roots and poles. It is a consequence of either Vandiver's conjecture or of Greenberg's conjecture that \(\lambda^+=0\). The author proves that \(\lambda^+=0\) if and only if every CW series f(T), which satisfies \(f(\zeta_ n-1)\) is a unit of \({\mathbb{Q}}(\zeta_ n)\) for all n, belongs to \(\bar R\). Here \(\zeta_ n\) is a primitive \(p^{n+1}\)-st root of unity, R is the set of rational, global CW series and \(\bar R\) denotes its topological closure.