Prime Spectrum of the Ring of Adeles of a Number Field

Abstract: Much is known about the adele ring of an algebraic number field from the perspective of Harmonic Analysis and Class Field Theory. However, its ring-theoretical aspects are often ignored. Here we present a description of the prime spectrum of this ring and study some of the algebraic and topological properties of these prime ideals. We also study how they behave under separable extensions of the base field and give an indication of how this study can be applied in adele rings not of number fields.