13. Purely inseparable extensions
09HD Purely inseparable extensions are the opposite of the separable extensions dened
in the previous section. These extensions only show up in positive characteristic.
09HE Denition 13.1. Let F be a eld of characteristic p > 0. Let K=F be an extension.
(1) An element 2 K is purely inseparable over F if there exists a power q of
p such that q 2 F.
(2) The extension K=F is said to be purely inseparable if and only if every
element of K is purely inseparable over F.
FIELDS 17
Observe that a purely inseparable extension is necessarily algebraic. Let F be a
eld of characteristic p > 0. An example of a purely inseparable extension is gotten
by adjoining the pth root of an element t 2 F which does not yet have one. Namely,
the lemma below shows that P = xp