The order of the reductions of an algebraic integer

Abstract

Let K be a number field, and let a be a non-zero element of K. Fix some prime number l. We compute the density of the following set: the primes p of K such that the multiplicative order of the reduction of a modulo p is coprime to l (or, more generally, has some prescribed l-adic valuation). We evaluate the degree over K of extensions of the form K(\zeta_m, \sqrt[n]{a}) with n\leq m, which are obtained by adjoining a root of unity of order l^m and the l^n-th roots of a, as this is needed for computing the above density.