McLeman's Massey-product criterion for finiteness of p-class field towers

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Let p>3p>3 be a prime, and let KK be an imaginary quadratic field whose class group has pp-rank two. Set

G=Gal⁡(Kur⁡,p/K).G=\operatorname{Gal}(K^{\operatorname{ur},p}/K).

Choose a basis x,yx,y of H1(G,Z/pZ)H^1(G,\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}), and let ρ1,ρ2\rho_1,\rho_2 denote the representations whose trace functionals occur below. McLeman's Massey-product criterion. The group GG is finite if and only if

(tr⁡ρ1⟨x,x,y⟩tr⁡ρ1⟨y,y,x⟩tr⁡ρ2⟨x,x,y⟩tr⁡ρ2⟨y,y,x⟩)\begin{pmatrix} \operatorname{tr}_{\rho_1}\langle x,x,y\rangle & \operatorname{tr}_{\rho_1}\langle y,y,x\rangle \\ \operatorname{tr}_{\rho_2}\langle x,x,y\rangle & \operatorname{tr}_{\rho_2}\langle y,y,x\rangle \end{pmatrix}

is invertible. The source presents this as an equivalent version of the Zassenhaus type conjecture and states that it will disprove it; hence this criterion is refuted in the stated generality.

References

Primary source

Eric Ahlqvist and Magnus Carlson, “Massey products in the étale cohomology of number fields”, arXiv:2207.06353 (2025).

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