subfield criterion
Let be a skew field and its subset. For to be a subfield of , it’s necessary and sufficient that the following three conditions are fulfilled:
- 1.
a non-zero element of .
- 2.
always when .
- 3.
always when and .
Proof. Because the conditions are fulfilled in every skew field, they are necessary. For proving the sufficience, suppose now that the subset these conditions. The condition 1 guarantees that is not empty and the condition 2 that is an subgroup of ; thus all the required properties of addition for a skew field hold in . If is a non-zero element of , then, according to the condition 3, we have . Moreover, for all . The laws of multiplication (associativity and left and distributivity over addition) hold in since they hold in whole . So fulfils all the postulates
for a skew field.