Hopf Galois structures on separable field extensions of odd prime power degree

TL;DR

This paper investigates the classification and enumeration of Hopf Galois structures on separable field extensions of odd prime power degree, revealing structural constraints and providing explicit counts for specific cases.

Contribution

It establishes that cyclic Hopf Galois structures exclude noncyclic ones in odd prime power degrees and characterizes the possible structures for degree p^3 extensions.

Findings

Cyclic structures imply no noncyclic structures for odd prime power degrees.

Explicit counts of Hopf Galois structures for degree p^n extensions with specific Galois groups.

Distinct behavior of structures for p=3 compared to larger primes.

Abstract

A Hopf Galois structure on a finite field extension $L/K$ is a pair $(\mathcal{H},\mu)$, where $\mathcal{H}$ is a finite cocommutative $K$-Hopf algebra and $\mu$ a Hopf action. In this paper, we present several results on Hopf Galois structures on odd prime power degree separable field extensions. We prove that if a separable field extension of odd prime power degree has a Hopf Galois structure of cyclic type, then it has no structure of noncyclic type. We determine the number of Hopf Galois structures of cyclic type on a separable field extension of degree $p^n$, $p$ an odd prime, such that the Galois group of its normal closure is a semidirect product $C_{p^n}\rtimes C_D$ of the cyclic group of order $p^n$ and a cyclic group of order $D$, with $D$ prime to $p$. We characterize the transitive groups of degree $p^3$ which are Galois groups of the normal closure of a separable field extension having some cyclic Hopf Galois structure and determine the number of those. We prove that if a separable field extension of degree $p^3$ has a nonabelian Hopf Galois structure then it has an abelian structure whose type has the same exponent as the nonabelian type. We obtain that, for $p>3$, the two abelian noncyclic Hopf Galois structures do not occur on the same separable extension of degree $p^3$. We present a table which gives the number of Hopf Galois structures of each possible type on a separable extension of degree $27$ to illustrate that for $p=3$, all four noncyclic Hopf Galois structures may occur on the same extension. Finally, putting together all previous results, we list all possible sets of Hopf Galois structure types on a separable extension of degree $p^3$, for $p>3$ a prime.