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Repeated discriminants: the discriminant of a quadratic field uniquely identifies it, but this is not true, in general, for higher-degree number fields. For example, there are two non-isomorphic cubic fields of discriminant 3969. They are obtained by adjoining a root of the polynomial x 3 − 21x + 28 or x 3 − 21x − 35, respectively.
In general a quadratic field of field discriminant can be obtained as a subfield of a cyclotomic field of -th roots of unity. This expresses the fact that the conductor of a quadratic field is the absolute value of its discriminant, a special case of the conductor-discriminant formula.
Geometrically, the discriminant of a quadratic form in three variables is the equation of a quadratic projective curve. The discriminant is zero if and only if the curve is decomposed in lines (possibly over an algebraically closed extension of the field). A quadratic form in four variables is the equation of a projective surface.
An integral quadratic form has integer coefficients, such as x 2 + xy + y 2; equivalently, given a lattice Λ in a vector space V (over a field with characteristic 0, such as Q or R), a quadratic form Q is integral with respect to Λ if and only if it is integer-valued on Λ, meaning Q(x, y) ∈ Z if x, y ∈ Λ.
Another instance of quadratic forms is Pell's equation =. Binary quadratic forms are closely related to ideals in quadratic fields. This allows the class number of a quadratic field to be calculated by counting the number of reduced binary quadratic forms of a given discriminant.
Let D be the discriminant of the field, n be the degree of K over , and = be the number of complex embeddings where is the number of real embeddings.Then every class in the ideal class group of K contains an integral ideal of norm not exceeding Minkowski's bound
All complex cubic fields with discriminant greater than −500 have class number one, except the fields with discriminants −283, −331 and −491 which have class number 2. The real root of the polynomial for −23 is the reciprocal of the plastic ratio (negated), while that for −31 is the reciprocal of the supergolden ratio .
For quadratic equations with rational coefficients, if the discriminant is a square number, then the roots are rational—in other cases they may be quadratic irrationals. If the discriminant is zero, then there is exactly one real root − b 2 a , {\displaystyle -{\frac {b}{2a}},} sometimes called a repeated or double root or two equal roots.