Friday, 18 September 2009

nt.number theory - von Staudt-Clausen over a totally real field

I also can't answer the question, but I'll say some things that could help. One thing von Staudt-Clausen tells you is the denominator of the Bernoulli number Bk: it is precisely, the product of primes p for which p1midk (when p1nmidk, a result of Kummer says that Bk/k is p-integral). As Buzzard commented, the Bernoulli numbers should be thought of (at least in this situation) as appearing in special values of p-adic L-functions, specifically, for k a positive integer
zetap(1k)=(1pk1)(Bk/k),


where zetap is the p-adic Riemann zeta function (see chapter II of Koblitz's "p-adic numbers, p-adic analysis, and zeta-functions", for example).
For a totally real field F, a generalization of the p-adic Riemann zeta function exists, namely the p-adic Dedekind zeta function zetaF,p (as proved independently by Deligne–Ribet (Inv Math 59), Cassou-Noguès (Inv Math 51), and Barsky (1978)). One link between these and the Leopoldt conjecture is through the p-adic analytic class number formula which is the main theorem of Colmez's "Résidue en s = 1 des fonctions zêta p-adiques" (Inv Math 91):
limsrightarrow1(s1)zetaF,p(s)=frac2[F:mathbfQ]RphEpwsqrtD

where h is the class number,
Ep=prodmathfrakpmidpleft(1mathcalN(mathfrakp)1right)
is a product of Euler-like factors, w = 2 is the number of roots of unity, D is the discriminant and Rp is the interesting part here: the p-adic regulator (as Colmez notes, sqrtD and Rp both depend on a choice of sign, but their ratio does not).



Theorem: The Leopoldt conjecture is equivalent to the non-vanishing of the p-adic regulator.



(For this, see, for example, chapter X of Neukirch-Schmidt-Wingberg's "Cohomology of number fields").



A clear consequence of this is that if zetaF,p does not have a pole at s = 1, then the Leopoldt conjecture is false for (F, p). Perhaps an understanding of the denominators of values of zetaF,p could lead to an understanding of the pole at s = 1 of zetaF,p.



Added (2010/04/09): So here's how you can use von Staudt–Clausen to see that the p-adic zeta function (of Q) has a pole at s = 1. It is clear from your statment of vS–C that it is saying that for kequiv0text(modp1), Bkequiv1/ptext(modmathbfZp) (i.e. it is not p-integral). Let ki=(p1)pi, the ki is p-adically converging to 0, so zetap(1ki) is approaching zetap(1) (since zetap(s) is p-adically continuous, at least for sneq1). By the aforementioned interpolation property of zetap(1k), we have
vp(zetap(1ki))=vp(Bki/ki)=1irightarrowinfty


hence 1/zetap(1ki) is approaching 0.

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