Singular integers and p-class group of cyclotomic fields

Roland Queme

Published 2006-09-14, updated 2009-10-19Version 8

Let $p$ be an irregular prime. Let $K=\Q(\zeta)$ be the $p$-cyclotomic field. From Kummer and class field theory, there exist Galois extensions $S/\Q$ of degree $p(p-1)$ such that $S/K$ is a cyclic unramified extension of degree $[S:K]=p$. We give an algebraic construction of the subfields $M$ of $S$ with degree $[M:\Q]=p$ and an explicit formula for the prime decomposition and ramification of the prime number $p$ in the extensions $S/K$, $M/\Q$ and $S/M$. In the last section, we examine the consequences of these results for the Vandiver's conjecture. This article is at elementary level on Classical Algebraic Number Theory.