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The discriminant of K is 49 = 7 2. Accordingly, the volume of the fundamental domain is 7 and K is only ramified at 7. In mathematics, the discriminant of an algebraic number field is a numerical invariant that, loosely speaking, measures the size of the (ring of integers of the) algebraic number field.
If the discriminant is positive, the number of non-real roots is a multiple of 4. That is, there is a nonnegative integer k ≤ n/4 such that there are 2k pairs of complex conjugate roots and n − 4k real roots. If the discriminant is negative, the number of non-real roots is not a multiple of 4.
All complex cubic fields with discriminant greater than −500 have class number one, except the fields with discriminants −283, −331 and −491 which have class number 2. The real root of the polynomial for −23 is the reciprocal of the plastic ratio (negated), while that for −31 is the reciprocal of the supergolden ratio .
That is because what enters the analytic formula for the class number is not h, the class number, on its own — but h log ε, where ε is a fundamental unit. This extra factor is hard to control. It may well be the case that class number 1 for real quadratic fields occurs infinitely often.
[8] Since the sign of the discriminant of a number field K is (−1) r 2, where r 2 is the number of conjugate pairs of complex embeddings of K into C, the discriminant of a cubic field will be positive precisely when the field is totally real, and negative if it is a complex cubic field.
For example, 15 is a composite number because 15 = 3 · 5, but 7 is a prime number because it cannot be decomposed in this way. If one of the factors is composite, it can in turn be written as a product of smaller factors, for example 60 = 3 · 20 = 3 · (5 · 4).
The number of elements in the class group is called the class number of K. The class number of Q(√-5) is 2. This means that there are only two ideal classes, the class of principal fractional ideals, and the class of a non-principal fractional ideal such as (2, 1 + √-5). The ideal class group has another description in terms of divisors ...
The number of ideal classes (the class number of R) may be infinite in general. In fact, every abelian group is isomorphic to the ideal class group of some Dedekind domain. [1] But if R is a ring of algebraic integers, then the class number is always finite. This is one of the main results of classical algebraic number theory.