I have been stuck with a severe problem from last few days. I have developed some intuition for my-self in understanding the class group, but I lost the track of it in my brain. So I am now facing a hell.
The Class group is given by $\rm{Cl}(F)=$ {Fractional Ideals of F} / {Principle fractional Ideals of F} , ($F$ is a quadratic number field) so that we are actually removing the Principal fractional ideals there (that's what I understood by quotient group). But how can that class group measure the failure of Unique Factorization ?
For example a common example that can be found in any text books is $\mathbb{Z[\sqrt{-5}]}$ in which we can factorize $6=2\cdot3=(1+\sqrt{-5})(1-\sqrt{-5})$. So it fails to have unique factorization. Now can someone kindly clarify these points ?
- How can one construct $\rm{Cl}(\sqrt{-5})$ by using the quotient groups ?
What are the elements of $\rm{Cl}(\sqrt{-5})$ ? What do those elements indicate ? ( I think they must some-how indicate the residues that are preventing the $\mathbb{Z[\sqrt{-5}]}$ from having a unique factorization )
What does $h(n)$ indicate ? ( Class number ). When $h(n)=1$ it implies that unique factorization exists . But what does the $1$ in $h(n)=1$ indicate. It means that there is one element in the class group , but doesn't that prevent Unique Factorization ?
EDIT:
I am interested in knowing whether are there any polynomial time running algorithms that list out all the numbers that fail to hold the unique factorization with in a number field ?
I am expecting that may be Class group might have something to do with these things. By using the class group of a number field can we extract all such numbers ? For example, if we plug in $\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt{-5}]$ then we need to have $6$ and other numbers that don't admit to a unique factorization.
Please do answer the above points and save me from confusion .
Thank you.