Existence of primitive normal pairs with one prescribed trace over finite fields (Q2243896)

Let \(\mathbb F_{q}\) be a finite field with \(q\) elements and let \(\mathbb F_{q^m}\) be its extension field of degree \(m\). A primitive element of \(\mathbb F_{q^m}\) is a generator of the multiplicative group \(\mathbb F_{q^m}^*\). A normal element \(\alpha \in \mathbb F_{q^m}\) over \(\mathbb F_q\) is an element such that \(\alpha, \alpha^q,\ldots, \alpha^{q^{m-1}}\) form an \(\mathbb F_q\)-basis of \(\mathbb F_{q^m}\). Primitive and normal elements are crucial in the theory of finite fields and, hence, deeply investigated in the literature. This paper is dealing with the following question: Given two positive integers \(n\) and \(m\), a prime power \(q\) and an element \(a \in \mathbb F_q\), do there exist \(\alpha \in \mathbb F_{q^m}\) and a rational function \(f(x) \in \mathbb F_{q^m}(x)\) of degree sum equal to \(n\), such that \(\alpha\) is normal and primitive, \(f(\alpha)\) is primitive and \(\mathrm{Tr}_{\mathbb F_{q^m}/\mathbb F_q}(\alpha^{-1})=a\)? The authors give two sufficient conditions for this to be true, whose proofs are based on computations using character sums. It is finally presented a detailed working example studying when \(q=5^k\) and \(n=2\).