Perhaps this question will not be considered appropriate for MO - so be it. But hear me out before you dismiss it as completely elementary.
As the question suggests, I would like to know when can be expressed in radicals (in the way that and can). Let , and consider the field extension . Using together with the binomial formula and the Pythagorean identity relating sine and cosine, we can see that lies in a solvable extension of . Thus is expressible in radicals if is.
To handle , we start by using the same trick (which most people also learn in an elementary trig class). Write , use the binomial theorem to expand, compare imaginary parts, and express the right-hand-side in terms of sine using the Pythagorean identity. This gives an explicit equation for any one of whose solutions is . This equation is not a polynomial in since it involves terms of the form , but it is enough to prove that is algebraic.
So I am curious about the number theoretic properties of this equation. What can be said about the Galois group of its "splitting field" over ? Can we at least determine when it is solvable? Note that if the prime factors of are and we can express each in radicals, then the same is true for . So it suffices to consider the case where is prime. That's about all the progress I have made.
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