A Simple Slide Rule for Finite Fields
Let \(q\) be a prime, \(n\) a positive integer, \(\mathbb F_{q^n}\) the finite field of \(q^n\) elements, \(f(x)=\sum_{k=0}^{n-1} f_kx^k\in \mathbb F_q[x]\) a primitive polynomial, and \(\alpha\in \mathbb F_{q^n}\) a zero of \(f(x)\), i.\,e.\ \(\alpha\) is a primitive element of \(\mathbb F_q\) and \(B=\{1,\alpha,\ldots,\alpha^{n-1}\}\) is a basis of \(\mathbb F_{q^n}\) over \(\mathbb F_q\). The author describes a method for determing the index table of \(\mathbb F_{q^n}\) in the basis \(B\) by hand based on the following observation. If \(\alpha^j=\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}m_{i,j}\alpha^i\), \(0\leq j<q^n-1\), then the coefficients \(m_{i,j}\) can be obtained by the recurrence relation \[ m_{i,n+j}=-\sum_{k=0}^{n-1} f_k m_{i,k+j} =-(f_0,\ldots,f_{n-1})\cdot (m_{i,j},\ldots,m_{i,n-1+j}), \] \(0\leq i<n\), \(0\leq j<q^n-n-1\), with initial values \[ m_{i,l}=\begin{cases}1 &\text{ if }i=l,\\ 0 &\text{ if }i\neq l, \end{cases}\quad 0\leq i,l<n. \]
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