For a group G, a subgroup $U \leqslant G$ and a group A such that $\mathrm {Inn}(G) \leqslant A \leqslant \mathrm {Aut}(G)$, we say that U is an A-covering group of G if $G = \bigcup _{a\in A}U^a$. A theorem of Jordan (1872), implies that if G is a finite group, $A = \mathrm {Inn}(G)$ and U is an A-covering group of G, then $U = G$. Motivated by a question concerning Kronecker classes of field extensions, Neumann and Praeger (1990) conjectured that, more generally, there is an integer function f such that if G is a finite group and U is an A-covering subgroup of G, then $|G:U| \leqslant f(|A:\mathrm {Inn}(G)|)$. A key piece of evidence for this conjecture is a theorem of Praeger [‘Kronecker classes of fields and covering subgroups of finite groups’, J. Aust. Math. Soc. 57 (1994), 17–34], which asserts that there is a two-variable integer function g such that if G is a finite group and U is an A-covering subgroup of G, then $|G:U|\leqslant g(|A:\mathrm {Inn}(G)|,c)$, where c is the number of A-chief factors of G. Unfortunately, the proof of this theorem contains an error. In this paper, using a different argument, we give a correct proof of the theorem.

Let $g(x)=x^3+ax^2+bx+c$ and $f(x)=g(x^3)$ be irreducible polynomials with rational coefficients, and let $ {\mathrm{Gal}}(f)$ be the Galois group of $f(x)$ over $\mathbb {Q}$. We show $ {\mathrm{Gal}}(f)$ is one of 11 possible transitive subgroups of $S_9$, defined up to conjugacy; we use $ {\mathrm{Disc}}(f)$, $ {\mathrm{Disc}}(g)$ and two additional low-degree resolvent polynomials to identify $ {\mathrm{Gal}}(f)$. We further show how our method can be used for determining one-parameter families for a given group. Also included is a related algorithm that, given a field $L/\mathbb {Q}$, determines when L can be defined by an irreducible polynomial of the form $g(x^3)$ and constructs such a polynomial when it exists.

In function fields in positive characteristic, we provide a concrete example of completely normal elements for a finite Galois extension. More precisely, for a nonabelian extension, we construct completely normal elements for Drinfeld modular function fields using Siegel functions in function fields. For an abelian extension, we construct completely normal elements for cyclotomic function fields.

We prove a large finite field version of the Boston–Markin conjecture on counting Galois extensions of the rational function field with a given Galois group and the smallest possible number of ramified primes. Our proof involves a study of structure groups of (direct products of) racks.

Let $p$ be a prime number, $k$ a finite field of characteristic $p>0$ and $K/k$ a finitely generated extension of fields. Let $A$ be a $K$-abelian variety such that all the isogeny factors are neither isotrivial nor of $p$-rank zero. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the finite generation of $A(K^{\mathrm {perf}})$ in terms of the action of $\mathrm {End}(A)\otimes \mathbb {Q}_p$ on the $p$-divisible group $A[p^{\infty }]$ of $A$. In particular, we prove that if $\mathrm {End}(A)\otimes \mathbb {Q}_p$ is a division algebra, then $A(K^{\mathrm {perf}})$ is finitely generated. This implies the ‘full’ Mordell–Lang conjecture for these abelian varieties. In addition, we prove that all the infinitely $p$-divisible elements in $A(K^{\mathrm {perf}})$ are torsion. These reprove and extend previous results to the non-ordinary case.

The Hopf–Galois structures admitted by a Galois extension of fields $ L/K $ with Galois group G correspond bijectively with certain subgroups of $ \mathrm{Perm}(G) $. We use a natural partition of the set of such subgroups to obtain a method for partitioning the set of corresponding Hopf–Galois structures, which we term ρ-conjugation. We study properties of this construction, with particular emphasis on the Hopf–Galois analogue of the Galois correspondence, the connection with skew left braces, and applications to questions of integral module structure in extensions of local or global fields. In particular, we show that the number of distinct ρ-conjugates of a given Hopf–Galois structure is determined by the corresponding skew left brace, and that if $ H, H^{\prime} $ are Hopf algebras giving ρ-conjugate Hopf–Galois structures on a Galois extension of local or global fields $ L/K $ then an ambiguous ideal $ \mathfrak{B} $ of L is free over its associated order in H if and only if it is free over its associated order in Hʹ. We exhibit a variety of examples arising from interactions with existing constructions in the literature.

Let F be a subfield of the complex numbers and $f(x)=x^6+ax^5+bx^4+cx^3+bx^2+ax+1 \in F[x]$ an irreducible polynomial. We give an elementary characterisation of the Galois group of $f(x)$ as a transitive subgroup of $S_6$. The method involves determining whether three expressions involving a, b and c are perfect squares in F and whether a related quartic polynomial has a linear factor. As an application, we produce one-parameter families of reciprocal sextic polynomials with a specified Galois group.

We prove new cases of the Inverse Galois Problem by considering the residual Galois representations arising from a fixed newform. Specific choices of weight $3$ newforms will show that there are Galois extensions of ${\mathbb Q}$ with Galois group $\operatorname {PSL}_2({\mathbb F}_p)$ for all primes p and $\operatorname {PSL}_2({\mathbb F}_{p^3})$ for all odd primes $p \equiv \pm 2, \pm 3, \pm 4, \pm 6 \ \pmod {13}$ .

Let $F_{2^n}$ be the Frobenius group of degree $2^n$ and of order $2^n ( 2^n-1)$ with $n \ge 4$ . We show that if $K/\mathbb {Q} $ is a Galois extension whose Galois group is isomorphic to $F_{2^n}$ , then there are $\dfrac {2^{n-1} +(-1)^n }{3}$ intermediate fields of $K/\mathbb {Q} $ of degree $4 (2^n-1)$ such that they are not conjugate over $\mathbb {Q}$ but arithmetically equivalent over $\mathbb {Q}$ . We also give an explicit method to construct these arithmetically equivalent fields.

For a Galois extension $K/F$ with $\text {char}(K)\neq 2$ and $\mathrm {Gal}(K/F) \simeq \mathbb {Z}/2\mathbb {Z}\oplus \mathbb {Z}/2\mathbb {Z}$ , we determine the $\mathbb {F}_{2}[\mathrm {Gal}(K/F)]$ -module structure of $K^{\times }/K^{\times 2}$ . Although there are an infinite number of (pairwise nonisomorphic) indecomposable $\mathbb {F}_{2}[\mathbb {Z}/2\mathbb {Z}\oplus \mathbb {Z}/2\mathbb {Z}]$ -modules, our decomposition includes at most nine indecomposable types. This paper marks the first time that the Galois module structure of power classes of a field has been fully determined when the modular representation theory allows for an infinite number of indecomposable types.

We prove a new irreducibility result for polynomials over ${\mathbb Q}$ and we use it to construct new infinite families of reciprocal monogenic quintinomials in ${\mathbb Z}[x]$ of degree $2^n$ .

For a prime number p and a free profinite group S on the basis X, let $S_{\left (n,p\right )}$ , $n=1,2,\dotsc ,$ be the p-Zassenhaus filtration of S. For $p>n$ , we give a word-combinatorial description of the cohomology group $H^2\left (S/S_{\left (n,p\right )},\mathbb {Z}/p\right )$ in terms of the shuffle algebra on X. We give a natural linear basis for this cohomology group, which is constructed by means of unitriangular representations arising from Lyndon words.

Let p be a prime. A pro-p group G is said to be 1-smooth if it can be endowed with a continuous representation $\theta \colon G\to \mathrm {GL}_1(\mathbb {Z}_p)$ such that every open subgroup H of G, together with the restriction $\theta \vert _H$ , satisfies a formal version of Hilbert 90. We prove that every 1-smooth pro-p group contains a unique maximal closed abelian normal subgroup, in analogy with a result by Engler and Koenigsmann on maximal pro-p Galois groups of fields, and that if a 1-smooth pro-p group is solvable, then it is locally uniformly powerful, in analogy with a result by Ware on maximal pro-p Galois groups of fields. Finally, we ask whether 1-smooth pro-p groups satisfy a “Tits’ alternative.”

We answer a question posed by Mordell in 1953, in the case of repeated radical extensions, and find necessary and sufficient conditions for $[F[\sqrt [m_1]{N_1},\dots ,\sqrt [m_\ell ]{N_\ell }]:F]=m_1\cdots m_\ell $ , where F is an arbitrary field of characteristic not dividing any $m_i$ .

We investigate unramified extensions of number fields with prescribed solvable Galois group G and certain extra conditions. In particular, we are interested in the minimal degree of a number field K, Galois over $\mathbb {Q}$ , such that K possesses an unramified G-extension. We improve the best known bounds for the degree of such number fields K for certain classes of solvable groups, in particular for nilpotent groups.

It is proven that, for a wide range of integers s (2 < s < p − 2), the existence of a single wildly ramified odd prime l ≠ p leads to either the alternating group or the full symmetric group as Galois group of any irreducible trinomial Xp + aXs + b of prime degree p.

A system of quadratic forms is associated to every generalised quadratic form over a division algebra with involution of the first kind in characteristic two. It is shown that this system determines the isotropy behaviour and the isometry class of generalised quadratic forms. An application of this construction to the Witt index of generalised quadratic forms is also given.

We solve the inverse differential Galois problem over differential fields with a large field of constants of infinite transcendence degree over $\mathbb{Q}$. More generally, we show that over such a field, every split differential embedding problem can be solved. In particular, we solve the inverse differential Galois problem and all split differential embedding problems over $\mathbb{Q}_{p}(x)$.

Let $f(x)=x^{6}+ax^{4}+bx^{2}+c$ be an irreducible sextic polynomial with coefficients from a field $F$ of characteristic $\neq 2$, and let $g(x)=x^{3}+ax^{2}+bx+c$. We show how to identify the conjugacy class in $S_{6}$ of the Galois group of $f$ over $F$ using only the discriminants of $f$ and $g$ and the reducibility of a related sextic polynomial. We demonstrate that our method is useful for producing one-parameter families of even sextic polynomials with a specified Galois group.

Suppose that $f(x)=x^{n}+A(Bx+C)^{m}\in \mathbb{Z}[x]$, with $n\geq 3$ and $1\leq m<n$, is irreducible over $\mathbb{Q}$. By explicitly calculating the discriminant of $f(x)$, we prove that, when $\gcd (n,mB)=C=1$, there exist infinitely many values of $A$ such that the set $\{1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D703},\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2},\ldots ,\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{n-1}\}$ is an integral basis for the ring of integers of $\mathbb{Q}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})$, where $f(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})=0$.