Characteristic of the following field?

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I have $2$ similar questions :

  1. Is the following set $K$ a field: $$K=\underset{i=even}{\bigcup} \mathbb{F}_{2^{i}}$$ where $\mathbb{F}_{2^{i}}$ values are all finite fields?

Is so, what is the characteristic of this field?

  1. Is $K \cup \mathbb{F}_{2^{3}}$ a field?

My answer is: yes both $1$ and $2$ are infinite fields by subfield criterion of finite fields, but I am not sure!

And what about the characteristic? Is it $2,$ which is the base prime, or is it $0,$ since it is infinite?

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Your $K$ is a field, but this is not as trivial as it looks. The non trivial point is to show stablility by $+$.

Let $x\in\mathbb{F}_{2^i}$ and $y\in\mathbb{F}_{2^j}$.

Then $i\mid ij$ and $j\mid ij$, so $\mathbb{F}_{2^i}$ and $\mathbb{F}_{2^j} $ are both contained in $\mathbb{F}_{2^{ij}}$, and $x+y\in \mathbb{F}_{2^{ij}}\subset K$ (since $ij$ is also even).

The characteristic of $K$ is also equal to the characteristic of any subfield, since the unit elements are the same. Since $\mathbb{F}_2$ is a subfield, the characteristic of $K$ is $2$.

Since $\mathbb{F}_{2^3}\subset \mathbb{F}_{2^6}$, your field in Question 2. is just $K$....