Fields whose Multiplicative Groups are Linear Spaces

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study fields whose multiplicative groups admit the structure of linear spaces. We prove that the multiplicative group of a finite field is a linear space if and only if the order of the multiplicative group is 1, 2, or a Mersenne prime. We give necessary conditions for the multiplicative group of an infinite field to be a linear space over another field. We also construct an example of an infinite field whose multiplicative group is a linear space over $\mathbb{Q}$.