Ideal class groups of cyclotomic number fields I

Abstract

Following Hasse's example, various authors have been deriving divisibility properties of minus class numbers of cyclotomic fields by carefully examining the analytic class number formula. In this paper we will show how to generalize these results to CM-fields by using class field theory. Although we will only need some special cases, we have also decided to include a few results on Hasse's unit index for CM-fields as well, because it seems that our proofs are more direct than those given by Hasse.