Processing math: 100%

First time here? Check out the FAQ!

Ask Your Question

Revision history [back]

click to hide/show revision 1
initial version

.is_galois Computation

Given an irreducible polynomial f, Sage computes whether a given field K=Q(f) is Galois with K.is_galois. This works well if f is of low degree, say 1-20. But when f is large, say degree 100 or more, this is very time consuming.

For K to be Galois, it must have the same degree as f and because we would expect (at random) f to have Galois group Sn, Gal(K/Q) will be very large. So in theory, determining 'Is Galois Y/N' should run much faster than actually computing the Galois group - which is very hard.

How does Sage .is_galois work? Does it try to compute the Galois group and compare sizes, or does it use some other method? If in computing Gal(K/Q) you find a group with size at least >degf, does it automatically stop and give 'False'? If not, is there a way to force such a feature using features already built into Sage?