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Jaffe

The document discusses linear independence of sets of square roots over the rational numbers. It first shows that the sets {1,√2} and {1,√3} are linearly independent over Q, implying that √2 and √3 are irrational. It then generalizes this to show that for any integer n>0 and integer ρ≠0, the set {1,n√ρ} is linearly independent over Q if and only if ρ is not the nth power of an integer. The document then proves several lemmas and theorems about the linear independence of increasingly large sets of square roots over Q.

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115 views3 pages

Jaffe

The document discusses linear independence of sets of square roots over the rational numbers. It first shows that the sets {1,√2} and {1,√3} are linearly independent over Q, implying that √2 and √3 are irrational. It then generalizes this to show that for any integer n>0 and integer ρ≠0, the set {1,n√ρ} is linearly independent over Q if and only if ρ is not the nth power of an integer. The document then proves several lemmas and theorems about the linear independence of increasingly large sets of square roots over Q.

Uploaded by

Epic Win
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Linearly Independent Integer Roots over the Scalar Field Q

Eric Jae July 12, 2007


It is easy to show that certain integer roots are irrational; the numbers 2 and 3 4 are good examples. An equivalent statement is that the sets {1, 2} and {1, 3 4}, respectively, are linearly independent over the scalar eld Q. Furthermore, it can be shown that + 2 is irrational, and that q 3 + r 2 is irrational for 3 all q, r Q. In fact, we can say that {1, 2, 3} is linearly independent over Q. In this paper we will generalize the above notions. First, we aim to determine for which integers and n > 0 the set {1, n } is linearly independent over Q. We can do this quickly by employing Lemma 2, which is a critical insight concerning the prime numbers due to Euclid. Theorem 3 shows that {1, n } is linearly independent exactly when is not the nth power of some integer. Lemma 1. Let a be an integer, and p a prime. If p does not divide a then gcd(p, a) = 1. Proof. We have gcd(p, a)|p, so gcd(p, a) = 1 or gcd(p, a) = p since p is prime. But by assumption p does not divide a, and gcd(p, a) does, so we must have gcd(p, a) = 1. Lemma 2. Let a1 , a2 , . . . , an be integers, and p a prime. If p|a1 a2 an then there is some i, 1 i n, such that p|ai . Proof. The Lemma is clear for n = 1, so assume that it holds for n 1. Suppose that p does not divide a1 . Then gcd(p, a1 ) = 1 by Lemma 1. Hence there exist integers r, s such that 1 = ps + a1 r. It follows that a2 a3 an = pa2 a3 an s + a1 a2 a3 an r. But p divides both terms on the right, so p|a2 a3 an . In particular, p divides one of a2 , . . . , an by the inductive hypothesis. This completes the proof. Theorem 3. Let = 0 and n > 0 be integers. The set {1, n } is linearly independent over Q if and only if is not the nth power of some integer. Proof. Suppose rst that = n , Z (if n is even then let be positive). Then 1 n =0 is a nontrivial linear combination of 1 and n with rational coecients, so {1, n } is linearly dependent. Conversely, suppose {1, n } is linearly dependent over Q. Then there exist integers a and b > 0, with gcd(a, b) = 1, such that = (a/b)n . Hence 1 bn = an . 1

In particular, this shows that b|an . Therefore if p is some prime that divides b, then p also divides an . It follows from Lemma 2 that p|a, which is impossible since gcd(a, b) = 1 < p. Therefore b must have no prime divisors, so it must be that b = 1 and = an . This question of linear independence generalizes to larger sets of numbers, and in this paper we will answer a broader question involving sets of square roots. For example, the claim that {1, a1 , a2 , . . . , an } is linearly independent over Q immediately implies that all numbers of the form x0 + x1 a1 + x2 a2 + + xn an are irrational whenever x0 , x1 , . . . , xn Q. The next theorem provides a class of a1 , a2 , . . . , an for which this is the case. Theorem 4. The set S := { n : n is a squarefree positive integer}

is linearly independent over Q. Note that an integer is squarefree if its prime factorization contains no prime more than once. The sequence of squarefree integers is 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, . . . In order to prove Theorem 4, we shall use the concept of eld extensions. If F1 is a subeld of F2 , written F1 F2 , then we shall say that F2 over F1 is a eld extension. We use the shorthand F2 /F1 to refer to F2 as a eld extension over F1 , although such notation has nothing to do with quotient groups. When F2 /F1 is a eld extension one can consider F2 as a vector space over the scalar eld F1 . We write [F2 : F1 ] to denote the dimension of this space; this number is also called the degree of F2 /F1 . It can be shown that degrees are multiplicative in towersthat is, if F1 F2 F3 then [F3 : F1 ] = [F3 : F2 ][F2 : F1 ]. Finally, if F2 /F1 is a eld extension and K F2 , then F1 (K) is the smallest subeld of F2 which contains K and is an extension of F1 . For example, when Q is considered as a subeld of R, Q( 2) = {a + b 2 : a, b Q}; Q({ 2, 3}) = (Q( 2))( 3) = {a + b 2 + c 3 + d 6 : a, b Q} = {a + b 3 : a, b Q( 2)}. We shall now prove the following Lemma. Observe that Lemma 5 implies Theorem 4, since for any nite subset T S of squarefree positive integers, we can nd a suitable set An such that T = Bn (An and Bn are dened below). Lemma 5. Suppose that An := {1 , 2 , . . . , n } Z+ is a set of positive integers such that no i An is the square of any integer, and every pair of elements in An is relatively prime. Then the set Bn := { 1 2 n : 0 k n; each i is a distinct element of An } is a basis of the space Q( 1 , 2 , . . . , n ) over the scalar eld Q. (Note that Bn has exactly 2n elements, corresponding to the power set of An .) 2

Proof. The proof is by induction on n. Suppose that is a positive integer that is not a perfect square. Then {1, } certainly spans Q( ), since every element of the latter is of the form a+b for a, b Q. Linear independence follows from Theorem 3. Hence the Lemma holds for n = 1. The Lemma also holds for n = 0, since {1} is a basis of Q/Q. Now suppose the Lemma holds for n 1 and n 2 and dene the elds F1 := Q( 1 ) F2 := F1 ( 2 ) = Q( 1 , 2 ) . . . Fn := Fn1 ( n ) = Q( 1 , . . . , n ). By the induction hypothesis we have [Fn1 : F0 ] = 2n1 since Bn1 is a basis of Fn1 /F0 . Let 1 , 2 , . . . , 2n1 be the 2n1 distinct elements of Bn1 . Since {1, n } spans Fn /Fn1 , and then since Bn1 spans Fn1 /F0 , every element x Fn can be written as x = a1 + a2 n ,
2n1

F0 := Q

a1 , a2 Fn1
2n1

=
k=1 2n1

bk k +

n
k=1

b2n1 +k k , b2n1 +k (k n ).

b1 , . . . , b2n F0

2n1

=
k=1

bk k +
k=1

But the 2n numbers {1 , . . . , 2n1 , 1 n , . . . , 2n1 n } are exactly the elements of Bn , so we conclude that Bn spans Fn /F0 and [Fn : F0 ] 2n . It remains to show that Bn is linearly independent. This will now follow immediately if we can show that [Fn : F0 ] = 2n (since Bn spans Fn /F0 , if it were linearly dependent then we could discard elements to obtain a basis of < 2n elements, which would be a contradiction). And degrees are multiplicative in towers, so it suces to show that [Fn : Fn1 ] = 2. Suppose not. Then we must have [Fn : Fn1 ] = 1, which means that Fn and Fn1 are the same eld; in particular, n Fn1 . Since {1, n1 } spans Fn1 /Fn2 , there exist scalars a, b Fn2 such that a + b n1 = n . a2 + 2ab n1 + b2 n1 = n . Now if ab = 0, then this would give an expression for n1 in terms of scalars in Fn2 . But / [Fn1 : Fn2 ] = 2 = 1 by the inductive hypothesis, so we must have n1 Fn2 and therefore ab = 0. Since Fn2 is a eld this means that either a = 0 or b = 0. If a = 0 then we have bn1 = n n1 , which implies that n n1 Fn2 . Now n n1 is not the square of any integer since n and n1 are relatively prime, so this contradicts the inductive hy pothesis when applied to An1 = {1 , 2 , . . . , n2 , n n1 }. Similarly, if b = 0 then we have n Fn2 , which contradicts the inductive hypothesis when applied to An1 = {1 , 2 , . . . , n2 , n }. Therefore Bn is linearly independent over Q, so it is a basis of Fn /F0 , as desired. That is,

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