Kronecker symbol


In number theory, the Kronecker symbol, written as or, is a generalization of the Jacobi symbol to all integers. It was introduced by.

Definition

Let be a non-zero integer, with prime factorization
where is a unit, and the are primes. Let be an integer. The Kronecker symbol is defined by
For odd, the number is simply the usual Legendre symbol. This leaves the case when. We define by
Since it extends the Jacobi symbol, the quantity is simply when. When, we define it by
Finally, we put
These extensions suffice to define the Kronecker symbol for all integer values.
Some authors only define the Kronecker symbol for more restricted values; for example, congruent to and.

Table of values

The following is a table of values of Kronecker symbol with n, k ≤ 30.
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930
1111111111111111111111111111111
210−10−101010−10−101010−10−101010−10−10
31−101−101−101−101−101−101−101−101−101−10
4101010101010101010101010101010
51−1−1101−1−1101−1−1101−1−1101−1−1101−1−110
6100010100010−1000−10−1000−10100010
711−11−1−1011−11−1−1011−11−1−1011−11−1−1011
810−10−101010−10−101010−10−101010−10−10
9110110110110110110110110110110
10101000−1010−101000−10−10−10−100010−10
111−1111−1−1−11−101−1111−1−1−11−101−1111−1−1−1
121000−101000−101000−101000−101000−10
131−111−1−1−1−111−1101−111−1−1−1−111−1101−111
141010100010−101010−101000101010−10
15110100−1100−10−1−10110100−1100−10−1−10
16101010101010101010101010101010
1711−11−1−1−111−1−1−11−111011−11−1−1−111−1−1−11
181000−101000−10−100010−1000101000−10
191−1−11111−11−11−1−1−1−111−101−1−11111−11−11
2010−1000−101010−1000−101010−1000−1010
211−101100−10−1−10−100110−1101−101100−10
2210−10−10−1010001010−1010101010−1010
231111−11−111−1−111−1−11−11−1−1−1−101111−11−1
24100010100010−1000−10−1000−10100010
25111101111011110111101111011110
2610−1010−10101000−101010101010−10−10
271−101−101−101−101−101−101−101−101−101−10
2810−10−10001010−1010−10−10001010−1010
291−1−11111−11−1−1−11−1−11−1−1−11−11111−1−1101
30100000−100010100010−100010000010

Properties

The Kronecker symbol shares many basic properties of the Jacobi symbol, under certain restrictions:
On the other hand, the Kronecker symbol does not have the same connection to quadratic residues as the Jacobi symbol. In particular, the Kronecker symbol for even can take values independently on whether is a quadratic residue or nonresidue modulo.

Quadratic reciprocity

The Kronecker symbol also satisfies the following versions of quadratic reciprocity law.
For any nonzero integer, let denote its odd part: where is odd. Then the following symmetric version of quadratic reciprocity holds for every pair of integers such that :
where the sign is equal to if or and is equal to if and.
There is also equivalent non-symmetric version of quadratic reciprocity that holds for every pair of relatively prime integers :
For any integer let. Then we have another equivalent non-symmetric version that states
for every pair of integers .
The supplementary laws generalize to the Kronecker symbol as well. These laws follow easily from each version of quadratic reciprocity law stated above.
For any integer we have
and for any odd integer it's

Connection to Dirichlet characters

If and, the map is a real Dirichlet character of modulus Conversely, every real Dirichlet character can be written in this form with .
In particular, primitive real Dirichlet characters are in a 1–1 correspondence with quadratic fields, where is a nonzero square-free integer. The character can be recovered from the field as the Artin symbol : that is, for a positive prime, the value of depends on the behaviour of the ideal in the ring of integers :
Then equals the Kronecker symbol, where
is the discriminant of. The conductor of is.
Similarly, if, the map is a real Dirichlet character of modulus However, not all real characters can be represented in this way, for example the character cannot be written as for any. By the law of quadratic reciprocity, we have. A character can be represented as if and only if its odd part, in which case we can take.