Professor Morales will study invariants associated to integral trace forms in normal tame finite extensions of number fields. He wants to see whether there are Stickelberger like conditions for classes associated to trace forms in fields of even degree. This project falls into the general area of arithmetic geometry - a subject that blends two of the oldest areas of mathematics: number theory and geometry. This combination has proved extraordinarily fruitful - having recently solved problems that withstood generations. Among its many consequences are new error correcting codes. Such codes are essential for both modern computers (hard disks) and compact disks.
