proof of characterization of perfect fields
Proposition 1
The following are equivalent:
- (a)
Every algebraic extension
of is separable
.
- (b)
Either or and the Frobenius map
is surjective
.
Proof.Suppose (a) and not (b). Then we must have , and there must be with no -th root in . Let be a splitting field over for the polynomial
,and let be a root of this polynomial.Then , which has coefficients in .This means that the minimum polynomial for over must be a divisor of and so must have repeated roots. This is not possible since is separableover .
Conversely, suppose (b) and not (a).Let be an element which is algebraic over but not separable.Then its minimum polynomial must have a repeated root, and by replacing by thisroot if necessary, we may assume that is a repeated root of .Now, has coefficients in and also has as a root. Since it is of lowerdegree than , this is not possible unless ,whence and has the form:
with .By (b), we may choose elements , for such that .Then we may write as:
Since and since the Frobenius map is injective, we see that
But then is a root of the polynomial
which has coefficients in , is non-zero (since ), and has lower degree than .This contradicts the choice of as the minimum polynomial of .