Algebraic Number Theory [Paperback]

This undergraduate textbook provides an approachable and thorough introduction to the topic of algebraic number theory, taking the reader from unique factorisation in the integers through to the modern-day number field sieve. The first few chapters consider the importance of arithmetic in fields larger than the rational numbers. Whilst some results generalise well, the unique factorisation of the integers in these more general number fields often fail. Algebraic number theory aims to overcome this problem. Most examples are taken from quadratic fields, for which calculations are easy to perform.

The middle section considers more general theory and results for number fields, and the book concludes with some topics which are more likely to be suitable for advanced students, namely, the analytic class number formula and the number field sieve. This is the first time that the number field sieve has been considered in a textbook at this level.

Unique factorisation in the natural numbers.- Number fields.- Fields, discriminants and integral bases.- Ideals.- Prime ideals and unique factorisation.- Imaginary quadratic fields.- Lattices and geometrical methods.- Other fields of small degree.- Cyclotomic fields and the Fermat equation.- Analytic methods.- The number field sieve.

Undergraduate mathematics students need both to develop facility with numerical and symbolic calculation and comfort with abstraction. Algebraic number theory offers an ideal context for encountering the synthesis of these goals. One could compile a shelf of graduate-level expositions of algebraic number theory, and another shelf of undergraduate general number theory texts that culminate with a first exposure to it. & Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. (D. V. Feldman, Choice, Vol. 52 (8), April, 2015)

In this book, the author leads the readers from the theorem of unique factorization in elementary number theory to centlóS