Pure Weierstrass gaps from a quotient of the Hermitian curve (Q1696759)

Goppa used the theory of curves over finite fields to construct a new family of codes, which is called Algebraic Geometry (AG) Codes. This was a breakthrough for the coding theory community as it showed the existence of codes whose asymptotic performance is exceeding the Gilbert-Varshamov bound. Then many works have been done to improve the parameters of these codes. One of the ways is to use Weierstrass semigroups and pure gaps in the construction and analysis of AG codes. For the construction of AG codes with good parameters, one needs curves with many rational points. One of the well-known examples is Hermitian Curves over \(\mathbb{F}_{q^2}\) defined by \(y^{q+1}=x^q+x\), where \(q\) is a power of a prime number. This is a specific Kummer extension whose Weierstrass semigroups and pure gaps were well-studied in the literature. In this paper, the author study pure Weierstrass gaps of many distinct rational points on the quotient of the Hermitian curve, i.e., the curves defined by the equation \(y^{m}=x^q+x\), where \(m\) is a divisor of \(q+1\). Note that the Hermitian curve is a special case. More precisely, they give an arithmetic characterization of pure Weierstrass gaps at many totally ramified places on a quotient of the Hermitian curve, and they explicitly investigate the cardinality of these pure gaps. In particular, they explicitly present the numbers of gaps and pure gaps at two distinct rational points, extending the results on Hermitian curves maintained by \textit{G. L. Matthews} [Des. Codes Cryptography 22, No. 2, 107--121 (2001; Zbl 0989.94032)]. They finish the paper with some concrete examples to illustrate their results.