On the exponents of class groups of some families of imaginary quadratic fields

Abstract

Let $a\geq 1$ and $n>1$ be odd integers. For a given prime $p$, we prove under certain conditions that the class groups of imaginary quadratic fields $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{a^2-4p^n})$ have a subgroup isomorphic to $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$. We also show that this family of fields has infinitely many members with the property that their class groups have a subgroup isomorphic to $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$. In addition, we deduce some unconditional results concerning the divisibility of the class numbers of certain imaginary quadratic fields. At the end, we provide some numerical examples to verify our results.