Working with large finite fields of characteristic 2; how to coerce them?
Working over the prime field of size 2, I would like to define two high-degree extensions (say, each intermediate extension degree is 16, so that the total extension is of degree 256) which are also extensions of each other. Yet something seems to be going wrong with the coercion. The documentation found here seems to indicate that the coercion on generators should be automatic using Conway polynomials. It seems that even the prime field is not embedded in the extensions. Is the issue due to the large field sizes?
Of course this can be done with defining irreducible polynomials. The extension over the prime field can be easily found with tables, like this one, but this wouldn't always work for intermediate fields, and the process of finding defining polynomials by hand is obviously arduous.
sage: p = 2
sage: r = 2**4
sage: s = 2**4
sage: F_p = GF(p)
sage: F_r.<a> = GF(p**r); F_r
Finite Field in a of size 2^16
sage: F_s.<b> = GF(p**(r*s)); F_s
Finite Field in b of size 2^256
sage: F_p in F_r
False
sage: F_p in F_s
False
sage: F_r in F_s
False
sage: a + b
-----------------------------------------------------
TypeError: unsupported operand parent(s) for +: 'Finite Field in a of size 2^16' and 'Finite Field in b of size 2^256'