Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Mathematics

Major Professor

Luis R. A. Finotti

Committee Members

David F. Anderson, Charles Collins

Abstract

In 1980, L. Adleman, C. Pomerance, and R. Rumely invented the first cyclotomicprimality test, and shortly after, in 1981, a simplified and more efficient versionwas presented by H.W. Lenstra for the Bourbaki Seminar. Later, in 2008, ReneSchoof presented an updated version of Lenstra's primality test. This thesis presents adetailed description of the cyclotomic primality test as described by Schoof, along withsuggestions for implementation. The cornerstone of the test is a prime congruencerelation similar to Fermat's \little theorem" that involves Gauss or Jacobi sumscalculated over cyclotomic fields. The algorithm runs in very nearly polynomial time.This primality test is currently one of the most computationally efficient tests and isused by default for primality proving by the open source mathematics systems Sageand PARI/GP. It can quickly test numbers with thousands of decimal digits.

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Number Theory Commons

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