In mathematics, a ray class field is an abelian extension of a global field associated with a ray class group of ideal classes or idele classes. Every finite abelian extension of a number field is contained in one of its ray class fields.
The term "ray class group" is a translation of the German term "Strahlklassengruppe". Here "Strahl" is German for ray, and often means the positive real line, which appears in the positivity conditions defining ray class groups. Hasse (1926, p.6) uses "Strahl" to mean a certain group of ideals defined using positivity conditions, and uses "Strahlklasse" to mean a coset of this group.
There are two slightly different notions of what a ray class field is, as authors differ in how the infinite primes are treated.