Franz Lemmermeyer Class Field Theory April 30, 2007 Franz Lemmermeyer email
[email protected] http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~hb3/ Preface Class field theory has a reputation of being an extremely beautiful part of number theory and an extremely difficult subject at the same time. For some- one with a good background in local fields, Galois cohomology and profinite groups there exist accounts of class field theory that reach the summit (exis- tence theorems and Artin reciprocity) quite quickly; in fact Neukirch’s books show that it is nowadays possible to cover the main theorems of class field theory in a single semester. Students who have just finished a standard course on algebraic number theory, however, rarely have the necessary familiarity with the more advanced tools of the trade. They are looking for sources that include motivational material, routine exercises, problems, and applications. These notes aim at serving this audience. I have chosen the classical ap- proach to class field theory for the following reasons: 1. Zeta functions and L-series are an important tool not only in algebraic number theory, but also in algebraic geometry. 2. The analytic proof of the first inequality is very simple once you know that the Dedekind zeta function has a pole of order 1 at s = 1. 3. The algebraic techniques involved in the classical proof of the second inequality give us results for free that have to be derived from class field theory in the idelic approach; among the is the ambiguous class number formula, Hilbert’s Theorem 94, or Furtw¨angler’s principal genus theorem.