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Trace Forms Of Abelian Extensions Of Number Fields, Karli Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with providing a description of certain symmetric bilinear forms, called trace forms, associated with finite normal extensions N/K of an algebraic number field K, with abelian Galois group Gal(N/K). These abelian trace forms are described up to Witt equivalence, that is, they are described as elements in the Witt ring W(K). Complete descriptions are obtained when the base field K has exactly one dyadic prime and either no real embeddings or one real embedding. For these fields K, the set of abelian trace forms is closed under multiplication in the Witt ring W(K).