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Exercise 4.7
Suppose that is a prime of the form and that is also a prime. Show that is a primitive root modulo .
Answers
Proof. The first examples of such couples are .
and are prime numbers.
From Fermat’s little theorem, , so .
The order of modulo divides : to prove that the order of is , it is sufficient to prove that
If , then , and : is not a prime, so .
If , then is a square modulo (prop. 4.2.1), there exists such that .
From the complementary case of the law of quadratic reciprocity (see next chapter, prop. 5.1.3), is a square modulo iff
Yet , so , , so is not a square modulo . This is a contradiction, so : is a primitive root modulo . □