Paper 3, Section II, H
Part II, 2012
Let be a power of the prime , and be a finite field consisting of elements.
Let be a positive integer prime to , and be the cyclotomic extension obtained by adjoining all th roots of unity to . Prove that is a finite field with elements, where is the order of the element in the multiplicative group of the .
Explain why what is proven above specialises to the following fact: the finite field for an odd prime contains a square root of if and only if .
[Standard facts on finite fields and their extensions can be quoted without proof, as long as they are clearly stated.]