scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3523695

Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to number theory (11-01) Ramification and extension theory (11S15) Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to field theory (12-01) Field extensions (12Fxx) Valued fields (12J10) General valuation theory for fields (12J20) Valuations and their generalizations for commutative rings (13A18)

Review text

This book is a very elementary and readable introduction to algebraic number theory, accessible to students who have had a course in modern algebra. The authors base their exposition on the theory of valuations and completions rather than on ideal theory and the problem of unique factorization, as is the case with most introductory texts. The first chapter is an introduction to valuation theory, the basic results (approximation theorem, existence and uniqueness of completions, classification of valuations on \(\mathbb Q\), properties of valuation rings) being treated in a detailed and clear manner. The chapter culminates in the description of the extensions of a valuation on a field to a separable algebraic extension of the field. The second chapter carries the theory further: the residue field and the notion of a discrete valuation ring are introduced and the main theorems about ramification proved (in particular the formula \(n= \sum e_if_i\), Krasner's lemma, the irreducibility of Eisenstein polynomials, the characterizations of unramified and of totally ramified extensions of complete discrete valuation fields, and Hensel's lemma). In the third chapter these ideas are applied to number fields, the relationship with the classical theory of Dirichlet-Dedekind coming from the isomorphism between the divisor group (\(=\) free abelian group on the set of discrete non-archimedean valuations) and the group of fractional ideals of the field. The main notions of algebraic number theory (norm, trace, integral basis, discriminant, \dots) are introduced and the decomposition of the discriminant as a product of local discriminants is proved and is used to show that the rational primes dividing the discriminant of a number field are exactly those which are ramified in the field. Finally, the standard geometry-of-numbers proofs are given for the finiteness of the class number and the Dirichlet unit theorem; this part of the book, which uses the archimedean rather than the non-archimedean primes and consequently has a geometric rather than an algebraic flavour, clashes somewhat with the style of the rest, although admittedly one could hardly omit such basic material. The last chapter discusses profinite groups and the Galois theory of infinite field extensions and introduces the decomposition group of a prime place in a Galois extension. However, the relevance of this to the previously developed theory is not explained, nor are any special properties of Galois number fields (e.g. that they must be totally real or totally imaginary) given. This is probably the least successful part of the book. The main drawback of the book as a whole is the almost complete lack of examples and applications. For instance, the student is not given any example of a number field at all (except in a short exercise asking him to determine the possible discriminants of quadratic fields), is not told what a cyclotomic field is or that an abelian cubic field has square discriminant or how primes split in a quadratic field, and is not shown the many applications of algebraic to ordinary number theory (quadratic reciprocity, solutions of Diophantine equations, \dots ) that make a book like that of Borevich-Shafarevich (Moscow 1964; Zbl 0121.04202) such exciting reading. This makes the book somewhat unsuitable for self-study; as a textbook for a course, it would be excellent, since the development of the ideas and the proofs of the theorems are extremely clear. That certain topics in particular the use of analytic methods) are not touched on cannot be seen as a fault, given the goals set by the authors; the treatment of those topics which are covered is very solid and should be an excellent preparation for the study of more sophisticated subjects such as the theory of adeles and class field theory. There are a few minor misprints or errors. In Proposición 5, \S 3.3.5 (p. 159), one must require that \(w_{i1},\dots,w_{in_i}\) be an \textit{integral} basis (and similarly ``\(w_{ij}\in K_{\mathfrak P_i}\) in the last sentence on p. 162 should read ``\(w_{ij}\in V_{K_{\mathfrak P_i}}\)). In the formula \(| D_{(w'_1,\dots, w'_n)/\mathbb Q} |=N_{K/\mathbb Q}(I)| D_K|\) on p. 177 one should replace \(N_{K/\mathbb Q}(I)\) by \(N_{K/\mathbb Q}(I)^2\). In the formula for Minkowski's constant (p. 183) one must replace \(\frac{n!}{n^n}\left(\frac{4}{\pi}\right)^{r_2}\) by \(\frac{n!}{n^n}\left(\frac{4}{\pi}\right)^{r_2}\sqrt{| D_K|}\).

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