Steinitz classes and partial genera of unimodular lattices over imaginary-quadratic fields

Abstract

In this paper we first of all determine all possible genera of (odd and even) definite unimodular lattices over an imaginary-quadratic field. The main questions are whether the partial class numbers of lattices with given Steinitz class within one genus are equal for all occurring Steinitz classes and whether the partial masses of those partial genera are equal. We show that the answer to the first question in general is “no” by giving a counter example, while the answer to the second question is “yes” by proving a mass formula for partial masses. Finally, we determine a list of all single-class partial genera and show that a partial genus consists of only one class if and only if the whole genus consists of only one class.