Weight behavior of irreducible cyclic BWD-codes (Q1383496)

Balanced weight distribution (BWD)-codes were introduced by \textit{P. Langevin} and \textit{J.-P. Zanotti} [Appl. Algebra Eng. Commun. Comput. 6, 299-307 (1995; Zbl 0832.94019)]. These codes have the property that there are the same number of codewords for each non-zero weight. In this article, such codes are studied in the case of irreducible cyclic codes. It is shown that the weights of any \(N\)-weight BWD-code over \(\text{GF}(q)\) is completely determined by the \(N\) weights of a BWD-code of dimension \(N\) defined over the prime field \(\text{GF}(p)\). The asymptotic behavior of Gauss sums over \(\text{GF}(p)\) is considered.