We construct unconditionally several families of number fields with the largest possible class numbers. They are number fields of degree 4 and 5 whose Galois closures have the Galois group $A_4, S_4$ and $S_5$. We first construct families of number fields with smallest regulators, and by using the strong Artin conjecture and applying zero density result of Kowalski-Michel, we choose subfamilies of $L$-functions which are zero free close to 1. For these subfamilies, the $L$-functions have the extremal value at $s=1$, and by the class number formula, we obtain the extreme class numbers.

We give an explicit treatment of cubic function fields of characteristic at least five. This includes an efficient technique for converting such a field into standard form, formulae for the field discriminant and the genus, simple necessary and sufficient criteria for non-singularity of the defining curve, and a characterization of all triangular integral bases. Our main result is a description of the signature of any rational place in a cubic extension that involves only the defining curve and the order of the base field. All these quantities only require simple polynomial arithmetic as well as a few square-free polynomial factorizations and, in some cases, square and cube root extraction modulo an irreducible polynomial. We also illustrate why and how signature computation plays an important role in computing the class number of the function field. This in turn has applications to the study of zeros of zeta functions of function fields.

We provide the reader with a uniform approach for obtaining various useful explicit upper bounds on residues of Dedekind zeta functions of numbers fields and on absolute values of values at $s=1$ of $L$-series associated with primitive characters on ray class groups of number fields. To make it quite clear to the reader how useful such bounds are when dealing with class number problems for $\CM$-fields, we deduce an upper bound for the root discriminants of the normal $\CM$-fields with (relative) class number one.

We give explicit formulas for the $L_4$ norm (or equivalently for the merit factors) of various sequences of polynomials related to the polynomials $$ f(z) := \sum_{n=0}^{N-1} \leg{n}{N} z^n. $$ and $$ f_t(z) = \sum_{n=0}^{N-1} \leg{n+t}{N} z^n. $$ where $(\frac{\cdot}{N})$ is the Jacobi symbol. Two cases of particular interest are when $N = pq$ is a product of two primes and $p = q+2$ or $p = q+4$. This extends work of H{\o}holdt, Jensen and Jensen and of the authors. This study arises from a number of conjectures of Erd\H{o}s, Littlewood and others that concern the norms of polynomials with $-1,1$ coefficients on the disc. The current best examples are of the above form when $N$ is prime and it is natural to see what happens for composite~$N$.

We give upper bounds on the modulus of the values at $s=1$ of Artin $L$-functions of abelian extensions unramified at all the infinite places. We also explain how we can compute better upper bounds and explain how useful such computed bounds are when dealing with class number problems for $\CM$-fields. For example, we will reduce the determination of all the non-abelian normal $\CM$-fields of degree $24$ with Galois group $\SL_2(F_3)$ (the special linear group over the finite field with three elements) which have class number one to the computation of the class numbers of $23$ such $\CM$-fields.