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English
Noun
extension field (plural extension fields)
- (algebra, field theory) A field L which contains a subfield K, called the base field, from which it is generated by adjoining extra elements.
1992, James G. Oxley, “Matroid Theory”, in Paperback, Oxford University Press, published 2006, page 215:Suppose
is a subfield of the field
. Then
is called an extension field of
. So, for instance,
and
are extension fields of
, although
is not an extension field of
.
1995, Terence Jackson, From Polynomials to Sums of Squares, Taylor & Francis, page 56:This extension field of
always contains a root of
in the sense that if
then
is a root of
in
. It then follows that any polynomial will have roots, either in the original field of its coefficients or in some extension field.
1998, Neal Koblitz, Algebraic Aspects of Cryptography, Volume 3, Springer, page 53:An extension field, by which we mean a bigger field containing
, is automatically a vector space over
. We call it a finite extension if it is a finite vector space. By the degree of a finite extension we mean its dimension as a vector space. One common way of obtaining extension fields is to adjoin an element to
: we say that
if
is the field consisting of all rational expressions formed using
and elements of
.
Usage notes
- Not to be confused with field extension, which refers to the construction

- The extension field
constitutes a vector space over
(i.e., a
-vector space).
- A minimal set
comprising one element of
plus additional elements not in
which together generate
is called a basis.
- The dimension of the vector space (aka the degree of the extension), is denoted
and is equal to the cardinality of
.
- In the case
,
is called the trivial extension and can be regarded as a vector space of dimension 1.
- An extension field of degree 2 (respectively, 3) may be called a quadratic extension (respectively, cubic extension).
- A field
which is both a subfield of
and an extension field of
may be called an intermediate field, intermediate extension or subextension of the field extension
.
Synonyms
- (field that contains a subfield): extension (where the base field is given)
Hyponyms
Translations
field that contains a subfield
Further reading
Anagrams