Large families of subsets arising from Woods problem and their pseudorandomness (Q1714962)

For a prime \(p\), \(0<\delta\leq 1\), and polynomials \(f\) and \(g\) over \(F_p\) with \(\deg(f)\geq 2\) and \(\deg(g)\geq 1\) the authors study the sets of integers \[ {\mathcal V}_f=\{1\leq a\leq p : | a-(f(a)\bmod p)| <\delta p\} \] and \[ {\mathcal V}_g=\{1\leq a\leq p : | a-(\overline{g(a)}\bmod p)| <\delta p\} \] where \(\overline{x}=x^{-1}\bmod p\) if \(x\not= 0\bmod p\) and \(0\) otherwise. First, they prove asymptotic formulas for \(| {\mathcal V}_f| \) and \(| {\mathcal V}_g| \) and bounds on multiplicative character sums along \({\mathcal V}_f\) and \({\mathcal V}_g\), respectively, using the standard approach which uses the Weil bound. Then they show that \({\mathcal V}_f\) and \({\mathcal V}_g\) both have a very high well-distribution measure and thus are not pseudorandom at all.