Explicit bounds for generators of the class group

Assuming Generalized Riemann's Hypothesis, Bach proved that the class group SICK of a number field K may be generated using prime ideals whose norm is bounded by 121og(2)delta(K), and by (4 + o(l)) log(2) delta(K) asymptotically, where delta(K) is the absolute value of the discriminant of K. Under the same assumption, Belabas, Diaz y Diaz and Friedman showed a way to determine a set of prime ideals that generates SICK and which performs better than Bach's bound in computations, but which is asymptotically worse. In this paper we show that SICK is generated by prime ideals whose norm is bounded by the minimum of 4.01 log(2) delta(K), 4(l + (2 pi e(gamma))N-_(K))(2) log(2) delta(k) and 4( log delta(k) + log log delta(K) - (gamma + log 2 pi)N-K + 1 + (N-K + 1) log(7log delta(K)/log delta(K))(2). Moreover, we prove explicit upper bounds for the size of the set determined by Belabas, Diaz y Diaz and Friedma's algorithms, confirming that it has size SIC (log delta(K) log log delta(K))(2). In addition, we propose a different algorithm which produces a set of generators which satisfies the above mentioned bounds and in explicit computations turns out to be smaller than log(2) delta(K) except for 7 out of the 31292 fields we tested.