Paper 1, Section II, 18H

Galois Theory
Part II, 2010

Let Fq\mathbb{F}_{q} be a finite field with qq elements and Fq\overline{\mathbb{F}}_{q} its algebraic closure.

(i) Give a non-zero polynomial P(X)P(X) in Fq[X1,,Xn]\mathbb{F}_{q}\left[X_{1}, \ldots, X_{n}\right] such that

P(α1,,αn)=0 for all α1,,αnFqP\left(\alpha_{1}, \ldots, \alpha_{n}\right)=0 \quad \text { for all } \alpha_{1}, \ldots, \alpha_{n} \in \mathbb{F}_{q}

(ii) Show that every irreducible polynomial P(X)P(X) of degree n>0n>0 in Fq[X]\mathbb{F}_{q}[X] can be factored in Fq[X]\overline{\mathbb{F}}_{q}[X] as (Xα)(Xαq)(Xαq2)(Xαqn1)(X-\alpha)\left(X-\alpha^{q}\right)\left(X-\alpha^{q^{2}}\right) \cdots\left(X-\alpha^{q^{n-1}}\right) for some αFq\alpha \in \overline{\mathbb{F}}_{q}. What is the splitting field and the Galois group of PP over Fq\mathbb{F}_{q} ?

(iii) Let nn be a positive integer and Φn(X)\Phi_{n}(X) be the nn-th cyclotomic polynomial. Recall that if KK is a field of characteristic prime to nn, then the set of all roots of Φn\Phi_{n} in KK is precisely the set of all primitive nn-th roots of unity in KK. Using this fact, prove that if pp is a prime number not dividing nn, then pp divides Φn(x)\Phi_{n}(x) in Z\mathbb{Z} for some xZx \in \mathbb{Z} if and only if p=an+1p=a n+1 for some integer aa. Write down Φn\Phi_{n} explicitly for three different values of nn larger than 2 , and give an example of xx and pp as above for each nn.