Combinatorial designs and the theorem of Weil on multiplicative character sums (Q1017416)

This paper applies Weil's theorem on multiplicative character sums to prove the following: Let \(q\equiv 1 \pmod e\) be a prime power. Let \(C_{j_1}^e, C_{j_2}^e, \dots, C_{j_t}^e\) be \(t\) cyclotomic classes of index \(e\), and \(\{b_1, b_2, \dots, b_t\}\) be a \(t\)-subset of \(GF(q)\). Set \[ X = \{ x\in GF(q) : x-b_i \in C_{j_i}^e \;for \;i = 1, \dots, t\}. \] Then \[ |X| \geq \frac{q - U\sqrt{q} - e^{t-1}t}{e^t}, \] where \(U = \sum_{h=1}^t{t\choose h}(e-1)^h(h-1)\). This result then is used to prove the existence of some kinds of combinatorial designs such as difference families, relative difference families, graph-decompositions, etc. This result may be used to give or simplify the proof of existence of other combinatorial objects.