Galois module structure of square power classes for biquadratic extensions

Abstract

Abstract 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.