Counting Hopf–Galois structures on cyclic field extensions of squarefree degree

Abstract

We investigate Hopf–Galois structures on a cyclic field extension L/K of squarefree degree n. By a result of Greither and Pareigis, each such Hopf–Galois structure corresponds to a group of order n, whose isomorphism class we call the type of the Hopf–Galois structure. We show that every group of order n can occur, and we determine the number of Hopf–Galois structures of each type. We then express the total number of Hopf–Galois structures on L/K as a sum over factorisations of n into three parts. As examples, we give closed expressions for the number of Hopf–Galois structures on a cyclic extension whose degree is a product of three distinct primes. (There are several cases, depending on congruence conditions between the primes.) We also consider one case where the degree is a product of four primes.