Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2020
The aim of this paper is to study circular units in the compositum K of t cyclic extensions of
${\mathbb {Q}}$
(
$t\ge 2$
) of the same odd prime degree
$\ell $
. If these fields are pairwise arithmetically orthogonal and the number s of primes ramifying in
$K/{\mathbb {Q}}$
is larger than
$t,$
then a nontrivial root
$\varepsilon $
of the top generator
$\eta $
of the group of circular units of K is constructed. This explicit unit
$\varepsilon $
is used to define an enlarged group of circular units of K, to show that
$\ell ^{(s-t)\ell ^{t-1}}$
divides the class number of K, and to prove an annihilation statement for the ideal class group of K.
R. K. was supported by Project 18-11473S of the Czech Science Foundation.