1. Aug 26, 2008

### navigator

1.Why the object requires prime number p?
2.Why the p-adic norm of x is defined by $$|x|_{p}=p^{-m}$$($$x=\frac{p^{m}r}{s}$$),not $$|x|_{p}=p^{m}$$?
3.$$Q_{p}\subset R$$ or $$R \subset Q_{p}$$?
4.What is the difference between p-adic and l-adic? what is the letter "l" stands for?

2. Aug 27, 2008

### morphism

3. Aug 27, 2008

### gel

1) You can still form the p-adic integers when p is not prime. However, $|x|_p$ wouldn't be a norm ($|xy|_p=|x|_p|y|_p$ wouldn't be true), and the p-adic integers will not be an integral domain (there are zero divisors).
2) the alternative you suggest wouldn't satisfy |x+y|<=|x|+|y|, so it isn't a norm.
3) neither. Q < R and Q < Q_p.
4) l-adic is the same as p-adic, if l=p ! l is just some prime number.

4. Sep 17, 2008

### navigator

Thank you.
One more question here is: What is the relationship between p-adic field and Galois field?

5. Sep 17, 2008

### CRGreathouse

They're quite different. A Galois field is just any field with a finite number of elements; the p-adics form an an infinite field for each prime p.

6. Sep 18, 2008

### mhill

can you define a p-adic integral of any function f(x) where x- is always a p-adic number

Can you define a p-adic differentiation ? in similar manner

Is there any relationship between the q-analogue of a function and the p-adic set of numbers?

7. Jan 26, 2009

### LorenzoMath

In arithmetic geometry, one usually uses the letter, p, to denote the characteristic of a base field and "l" for a prime number different from the char.