Abstract
The determination of the unit group of an algebraic number field is rather difficult in general. However, for cyclotomic fields, it is possible to give explicitly a group of units, namely the cyclotomic units, which is of finite index in the full unit group. Moreover, this index is closely related to the class number, a fact which allows us to prove Leopoldt’s p-adic class number formula. Finally, we study more closely the units of the pth cyclotomic field, and give relations with p-adic L-functions and with Vandiver’s conjecture.
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© 1982 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
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Washington, L.C. (1982). Cyclotomic Units. In: Introduction to Cyclotomic Fields. Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol 83. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0133-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0133-2_8
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-0135-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-0133-2
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