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Qiaochu Yuan
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Generalized Teichmuller representatives

Fix a prime p. The Teichmuller representative associated to a p-adic integer a is the unique root of x^p - x in Zp congruent to a mod p. One can identify this representative with the limit, as n tends to infinity, of a^{p^n}.

Now let a1, a2, ... ak be the roots of an irreducible monic polynomial in Zp[x]. One can show that the limit, as n tends to infinity, of a1^{p^n} + a_2^{p^n} + ... + ak^{p^n} also exists as a p-adic integer. Is there a characterization of this p-adic integer analogous to the above characterization?

Qiaochu Yuan
  • 118.2k
  • 40
  • 447
  • 741