Let p be a prime number. Let $n\geq 2$ be an integer given by $n = p^{m_1} + p^{m_2} + \cdots + p^{m_r}$, where $0\leq m_1 < m_2 < \cdots < m_r$ are integers. Let $a_0, a_1, \ldots , a_{n-1}$ be integers not divisible by p. Let $K = \mathbb Q(\theta )$ be an algebraic number field with $\theta \in {\mathbb C}$ a root of an irreducible polynomial $f(x) = \sum _{i=0}^{n-1}a_i{x^i}/{i!} + {x^n}/{n!}$ over the field $\mathbb Q$ of rationals. We prove that p divides the common index divisor of K if and only if $r>p$. In particular, if $r>p$, then K is always nonmonogenic. As an application, we show that if $n \geq 3$ is an odd integer such that $n-1\neq 2^s$ for $s\in {\mathbb Z}$ and K is a number field generated by a root of a truncated exponential Taylor polynomial of degree n, then K is always nonmonogenic.

Motivated by the recent work of Zhi-Wei Sun [‘Problems and results on determinants involving Legendre symbols’, Preprint, arXiv:2405.03626], we study some matrices concerning subgroups of finite fields. For example, let $q\equiv 3\pmod 4$ be an odd prime power and let $\phi $ be the unique quadratic multiplicative character of the finite field $\mathbb {F}_q$. If the set $\{s_1,\ldots ,s_{(q-1)/2}\}=\{x^2:\ x\in \mathbb {F}_q\setminus \{0\}\}$, then we prove that

$$ \begin{align*}\det[t+\phi(s_i+s_j)+\phi(s_i-s_j)]_{1\le i,j\le (q-1)/2}=\bigg(\frac{q-1}{2}t-1\bigg)q^{{(q-3)}/{4}}.\end{align*} $$

This confirms a conjecture of Zhi-Wei Sun.

This paper explores the existence and distribution of primitive elements in finite field extensions with prescribed traces in several intermediate field extensions. Our main result provides an inequality-like condition to ensure the existence of such elements. We then derive concrete existence results for a special class of intermediate extensions.

The holomorphy conjecture roughly states that Igusa’s zeta function associated to a hypersurface and a character is holomorphic on $\mathbb{C}$ whenever the order of the character does not divide the order of any eigenvalue of the local monodromy of the hypersurface. In this article, we prove the holomorphy conjecture for surface singularities that are nondegenerate over $\mathbb{C}$ with respect to their Newton polyhedron. In order to provide relevant eigenvalues of monodromy, we first show a relation between the normalized volumes (which appear in the formula of Varchenko for the zeta function of monodromy) of the faces in a simplex in arbitrary dimension. We then study some specific character sums that show up when dealing with false poles. In contrast to the context of the trivial character, we here need to show fakeness of certain candidate poles other than those contributed by $B_{1}$-facets.

We express the number of points on the Dwork hypersurface $X_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}}^{d}:x_{1}^{d}+x_{2}^{d}+\cdots +x_{d}^{d}=d\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}x_{1}x_{2}\cdots x_{d}$ over a finite field of order $q\not \equiv 1\,(\text{mod}\,d)$ in terms of McCarthy’s $p$-adic hypergeometric function for any odd prime $d$.

We prove character sum estimates for additive Bohr subsets modulo a prime. These estimates are analogous to the classical character sum bounds of Pólya–Vinogradov and Burgess. These estimates are applied to obtain results on recurrence $\bmod \,p$ by special elements.

In this paper we study the extension problem, the averaging problem, and the generalized Erdős–Falconer distance problem associated with arbitrary homogeneous varieties in three dimensional vector spaces over finite fields. In the case when the varieties do not contain any plane passing through the origin, we obtain the best possible results on the aforementioned three problems. In particular, our result on the extension problem modestly generalizes the result by Mockenhaupt and Tao who studied the particular conical extension problem. In addition, investigating the Fourier decay on homogeneous varieties enables us to give complete mapping properties of averaging operators. Moreover, we improve the size condition on a set such that the cardinality of its distance set is nontrivial.

The concept of a metaplectic form was introduced about 40 years ago by T. Kubota. He showed how Jacobi-Legendre symbols of arbitrary order give rise to characters of arithmetic groups. Metaplectic forms are the automorphic forms with these characters. Kubota also showed how higher analogues of the classical theta functions could be constructed using Selberg's theory of Eisenstein series. Unfortunately many aspects of these generalized theta series are still unknown, for example, their Fourier coefficients. The analogues in the case of function fields over finite fields can in principle be calculated explicitly and this was done first by J. Hoffstein in the case of a rational function field. Here we shall return to his calculations and clarify a number of aspects of them, some of which are important for recent developments.

Fix an integer $m>1$, and set ${{\zeta }_{m}}=\exp \left( 2\pi i/m \right)$. Let $\bar{x}$ denote the multiplicative inverse of $x$ modulo $m$. The Kloosterman sums $R\left( d \right)=\sum\limits_{x}{\zeta _{m}^{x+d\bar{x}}},1\le d\le m,\left( d,m \right)=1$, satisfy the polynomial

$${{f}_{m}}\left( x \right)=\underset{d}{\mathop{\prod }}\,\left( x-R\left( d \right) \right)={{x}^{\phi \left( m \right)}}+{{c}_{1}}{{x}^{\phi \left( m \right)-1}}+\cdot \cdot \cdot +{{c}_{\phi \left( m \right)}},$$

where the sum and product are taken over a complete system of reduced residues modulo $m$. Here we give a natural factorization of ${{f}_{m}}\left( x \right)$, namely,

$${{f}_{m}}\left( x \right)=\underset{\sigma }{\mathop{\prod }}\,f_{m}^{\left( \sigma \right)}\left( x \right),$$

where $\sigma$ runs through the square classes of the group $Z_{m}^{*}$ of reduced residues modulo $m$. Questions concerning the explicit determination of the factors $f_{m}^{\left( \sigma \right)}\left( x \right)$ (or at least their beginning coefficients), their reducibility over the rational field $\text{Q}$ and duplication among the factors are studied. The treatment is similar to what has been done for period polynomials for finite fields.

The Hansen-Mullen Primitivity Conjecture (HMPC) (1992) asserts that, with some (mostly obvious) exceptions, there exists a primitive polynomial of degree $n$ over any finite field with any coefficient arbitrarily prescribed. This has recently been proved whenever $n \geq 9$. It is also known to be true when $n \leq 3$. We show that there exists a primitive polynomial of any degree $n\geq 4$ over any finite field with its second coefficient (i.e., that of $x^{n-2}$) arbitrarily prescribed. In particular, this establishes the HMPC when $n=4$. The lone exception is the absence of a primitive polynomial of the form $x^4+a_1x^3 +x^2+a_3x+1$ over the binary field. For $n \geq 6$ we prove a stronger result, namely that the primitive polynomial may also have its constant term prescribed. This implies further cases of the HMPC. When the field has even cardinality 2-adic analysis is required for the proofs.

Let $q\,=\,{{p}^{r}}$ with $p$ an odd prime, and ${{\mathbf{F}}_{q}}$ denote the finite field of $q$ elements. Let $\text{Tr}\,:\,{{\mathbf{F}}_{q}}\,\to \,{{\mathbf{F}}_{p}}$ be the usual trace map and set ${{\zeta }_{p}}\,=\,\exp (2\pi i/p)$. For any positive integer $e$, define the (modified) Gauss sum ${{g}_{r}}(e)$ by

$${{g}_{r}}(e)=\underset{x\in {{\mathbf{F}}_{q}}}{\mathop{\sum }}\,\zeta _{p}^{\text{Tr}{{x}^{e}}}$$

Recently, Evans gave an elegant determination of ${{g}_{1}}(12)$ in terms of ${{g}_{1}}(3),\,{{g}_{1}}(4)$ and ${{g}_{1}}(6)$ which resolved a sign ambiguity present in a previous evaluation. Here I generalize Evans' result to give a complete determination of the sum ${{g}_{r}}(12)$.

Precise, elegant evaluations are given for Gauss sums of orders six and twelve.