Chebotarev's density theorem in algebraic number theory describes statistically the splitting of primes in a given Galois extension K of the field
Contents
- History and motivation
- Relation with Dirichlets theorem
- Formulation
- Statement
- Effective Version
- Infinite extensions
- Important consequences
- References
A special case that is easier to state says that if K is an algebraic number field which is a Galois extension of Q of degree n, then the prime numbers that completely split in K have density
1/namong all primes. More generally, splitting behavior can be specified by assigning to (almost) every prime number an invariant, its Frobenius element, which is a representative of a well-defined conjugacy class in the Galois group
Gal(K/Q).Then the theorem says that the asymptotic distribution of these invariants is uniform over the group, so that a conjugacy class with k elements occurs with frequency asymptotic to
k/n.History and motivation
When Carl Friedrich Gauss first introduced the notion of complex integers Z[i], he observed that the ordinary prime numbers may factor further in this new set of integers. In fact, if a prime p is congruent to 1 mod 4, then it factors into a product of two distinct prime gaussian integers, or "splits completely"; if p is congruent to 3 mod 4, then it remains prime, or is "inert"; and if p is 2 then it becomes a product of the square of the prime (1+i) and the invertible gaussian integer -i; we say that 2 "ramifies". For instance,
From this description, it appears that as one considers larger and larger primes, the frequency of a prime splitting completely approaches 1/2, and likewise for the primes that remain primes in Z[i]. Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions demonstrates that this is indeed the case. Even though the prime numbers themselves appear rather erratically, splitting of the primes in the extension
follows a simple statistical law.
Similar statistical laws also hold for splitting of primes in the cyclotomic extensions, obtained from the field of rational numbers by adjoining a primitive root of unity of a given order. For example, the ordinary integer primes group into four classes, each with probability 1/4, according to their pattern of splitting in the ring of integers corresponding to the 8th roots of unity. In this case, the field extension has degree 4 and is abelian, with the Galois group isomorphic to the Klein four-group. It turned out that the Galois group of the extension plays a key role in the pattern of splitting of primes. Georg Frobenius established the framework for investigating this pattern and proved a special case of the theorem. The general statement was proved by Nikolai Grigoryevich Chebotaryov in 1922.
Relation with Dirichlet's theorem
The Chebotarev density theorem may be viewed as a generalisation of Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions. A quantitative form of Dirichlet's theorem states that if N≥2 is an integer and a is coprime to N, then the proportion of the primes p congruent to a mod N is asymptotic to 1/n, where n=φ(N) is the Euler totient function. This is a special case of the Chebotarev density theorem for the Nth cyclotomic field K. Indeed, the Galois group of K/Q is abelian and can be canonically identified with the group of invertible residue classes mod N. The splitting invariant of a prime p not dividing N is simply its residue class because the number of distinct primes into which p splits is φ(N)/m, where m is multiplicative order of p modulo N; hence by the Chebotarev density theorem, primes are asymptotically uniformly distributed among different residue classes coprime to N.
Formulation
In their survey article, Lenstra & Stevenhagen (1996) give an earlier result of Frobenius in this area. Suppose K is a Galois extension of the rational number field Q, and P(t) a monic integer polynomial such that K is a splitting field of P. It makes sense to factorise P modulo a prime number p. Its 'splitting type' is the list of degrees of irreducible factors of P mod p, i.e. P factorizes in some fashion over the prime field Fp. If n is the degree of P, then the splitting type is a partition Π of n. Considering also the Galois group G of K over Q, each g in G is a permutation of the roots of P in K; in other words by choosing an ordering of α and its algebraic conjugates, G is faithfully represented as a subgroup of the symmetric group Sn. We can write g by means of its cycle representation, which gives a 'cycle type' c(g), again a partition of n.
The theorem of Frobenius states that for any given choice of Π the primes p for which the splitting type of P mod p is Π has a natural density δ, with δ equal to the proportion of g in G that have cycle type Π.
The statement of the more general Chebotarev theorem is in terms of the Frobenius element of a prime (ideal), which is in fact an associated conjugacy class C of elements of the Galois group G. If we fix C then the theorem says that asymptotically a proportion |C|/|G| of primes have associated Frobenius element as C. When G is abelian the classes of course each have size 1. For the case of a non-abelian group of order 6 they have size 1, 2 and 3, and there are correspondingly (for example) 50% of primes p that have an order 2 element as their Frobenius. So these primes have residue degree 2, so they split into exactly three prime ideals in a degree 6 extension of Q with it as Galois group.
Statement
Let L be a finite Galois extension of a number field K with Galois group G. Let X be a subset of G that is stable under conjugation. The set of primes v of K that are unramified in L and whose associated Frobenius conjugacy class Fv is contained in X has density
Effective Version
The Generalized Riemann hypothesis implies an effective version of the Chebotarev density theorem: if L/K is a finite Galois extension with Galois group G, and C a union of conjugacy classes of G, the number of unramified primes of K of norm below x with Frobenius conjugacy class in C is
where the constant implied in the big-O notation is absolute, n is the degree of L over Q, and Δ its discriminant.
The effective form of Chebotarev's density theory becomes much weaker without GRH. Take L to be a finite Galois extension of Q with Galois group G and degree d. Take
where
Infinite extensions
The statement of the Chebotarev density theorem can be generalized to the case of an infinite Galois extension L / K that is unramified outside a finite set S of primes of K (i.e. if there is a finite set S of primes of K such that any prime of K not in S is unramified in the extension L / K). In this case, the Galois group G of L / K is a profinite group equipped with the Krull topology. Since G is compact in this topology, there is a unique Haar measure μ on G. For every prime v of K not in S there is an associated Frobenius conjugacy class Fv. The Chebotarev density theorem in this situation can be stated as follows:
Let X be a subset of G that is stable under conjugation and whose boundary has Haar measure zero. Then, the set of primes v of K not in S such that Fv ⊆ X has densityThis reduces to the finite case when L / K is finite (the Haar measure is then just the counting measure).
A consequence of this version of the theorem is that the Frobenius elements of the unramified primes of L are dense in G.
Important consequences
The Chebotarev density theorem reduces the problem of classifying Galois extensions of a number field to that of describing the splitting of primes in extensions. Specifically, it implies that as a Galois extension of K, L is uniquely determined by the set of primes of K that split completely in it. A related corollary is that if almost all prime ideals of K split completely in L, then in fact L = K.