7 Local Fields
Definition 7.1 (Local field).
Let
be a valued field. Then
is a local field if it is complete and locally compact.
Reminder: locally compact means for all ,
there exists open
and compact
such that .
Example.
and are
compact.
Proposition 7.2.
Assuming that:
Then the following are equivalent:
-
(i)
is locally compact
-
(ii)
is compact
-
(iii)
is discrete and
is finite.
Proof.
-
(i) (ii)
Let
be a compact neighbourhood of
(
with
open,
compact). Then there exists
such that .
Since
is closed,
is compact. Hence
is compact (
is a homeomorphism).
-
(ii) (i)
compact implies
is compact for all .
So
is locally compact.
-
(ii) (iii)
Let ,
and
be a set of coset representatives for .
Then
is a disjoint open cover. So
is finite by compactness of .
So
is finite, hence
is finite.o
Suppose is not
discrete. Then let
such that
Then .
But
is finite so can only have finitely many subgroups, contradiction.
-
(iii) (ii)
Since
is a metric space, it suffices to prove
is sequentially compact.
Let
be a sequence in ,
and fix
a uniformiser. Since ,
is finite for all
().
Since
is finite, there exists
and a subsequence
such that
for all .
Since is finite,
there exists and
a subsequence
of such that
. Continuing, this,
we obtain sequences
for
such that
-
(1)
is a subsequence of
-
(2)
For any ,
there exists
such that
for all .
Then necessarily
for all .
Now choose . This
defines a subsequence of .
Moreover, .
Thus
is Cauchy, hence converges by completeness. □
More on inverse limits.
Let a sequence of sets
/ groups / rings and
homeomorphisms.
Definition 7.3 (Profinite topology).
Assume
is finite. The profinite topology on
is the weakest topology on
such that
is continuous for all ,
where
is equipped with the discrete topology.
Fact:
with the profinite topology is compact, totally disconnected and Hausdorff.
Proposition 7.4.
Assuming that:
Proof.
One checks that the sets
is a basis of open sets in both topologies.
For :
clear.
For profinite topology:
is continuous if and only if
is open for all .
□
Goal: Classify all local fields.
Lemma 7.5.
Assuming that:
Proof.
Theorem 6.1 implies that
is complete and discretely valued. Suffices to show
is finite. Let
be a basis for
as a
vector space.
(sup norm)
equivalent to implies
that there exists
such that
Take such
that ,
then
Then
is finitely generated as a module over ,
hence
is finitely generated over .
□
Definition 7.6 (Equal characteristic).
A non-archimedean valued field
has equal characteristic if .
Otherwise it has mixed characteristic.
Theorem 7.7.
Assuming that:
Then for
some .
Lemma 7.8.
Assuming that:
Theorem 7.9 (Ostrowski’s Theorem).
Assuming that:
Proof.
Case: is
archimedean. We fix an
integer such that (exists
by Lemma 7.8). Let be
an integer and write
in base :
with ,
. Let
, and
then we have
Then
and
Switching roles of
and , we
also obtain
Then () and
()
gives
(using ):
|
Hence
for all ,
hence
for all .
Case 2: is non-archimedean.
As in Lemma 7.8, we have
for all . Since
is non-trivial,
there exists such
that . Write
decomposition into
prime factors. Then ,
for some .
Suppose for
some prime ,
. Write
with
.
Then
contradiction. Thus
and for all
primes .
Hence is
equivalent to .
□
Theorem 7.10.
Assuming that:
Then is a finite
extension of
.
Proof.
mixed characteristic implies that ,
hence .
non-archimedean implies that
for some prime .
Since
is complete, .
Suffices to show that
is finite as a -module.
Let
be a uniformiser,
a normalised valuation and set .
Then
is finite since
is finite. Since
we have
a finite dimensional vector space over .
Let be coset
representatives for -basis
of .
Then
is a set of coset representatives for .
Let .
Proposition 3.4(ii) tells us that
Hence is
finite over .
□
On Example Sheet 2 we will show that if
is complete and archimedean, then
or . In
summary:
If a
local field, then either: