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Section Fields of Fractions and Euclidean Domains

Worksheet Part 1: Fields of Fractions

In this activity, you’ll practice constructing the field of fractions of an integral domain and showing that it is isomorphic to a known field.

1.

Let \(\Z[i]=\{a+bi\mid a,b\in \Z\}\text{.}\) Show that the field of fractions \(F\) of \(\Z[i]\) is ring-isomorphic to \(\Q[i]=\{r+si\mid r,s \in \Q\}\text{.}\) It wil lbe helpful to show that any fraction \((a+bi)/(c+di)\in F\setminus\{0\}\) is equivalent to a fraction of the form \((x+yi)/z\) with \(x,y,z\in \Z\) and \(z\gt 0\text{,}\) which you can then use to define a map from \(F\) to \(\Q[i]\text{.}\) You will need to show that your is a well-defined ring homomorphism that is 1-to-1 and onto.

Worksheet Part 2: \(\Z[i]\) is a Euclidean Domain

In this activity, you’ll practice showing that a ring is a Euclidean domain.

1.

In this problem, you will show that the set of Gaussian integers \(\Z[i]\) is a Euclidean domain. You may assume that the norm function \(d(a+bi)=a^2+b^2\) satisfies the norm properties without proof.

(b)

Show that if \(xy^{-1}=s+ti \in \Q[i]\) (the field of fractions of \(\Z[i]\)), then if \(m\) and \(n\) are the nearest integers to \(s\) and \(t\) respectively we have
\begin{equation*} x=(m+ni)y+[(s-m)+(t-n)i]y. \end{equation*}

(c)

Show that the division condition of a Euclidean domain is satisfied with
\begin{equation*} q=m+ni, \qquad r=[(s-m)+(t-n)i]y, \end{equation*}
using the fact that we must have \(|m-s|,|n-t|\leq 1/2\text{.}\)

(d)

Apply the above to find the quotient and remainder upon dividing \(3-4i\) by \(2+5i\text{.}\)