A tower of Artin-Schreier extensions of function fields attaining the Drinfeld-Vladut bound (Q1895702)

For an algebraic function field \(F\) having a finite constant field, let \(g(F)\) (resp. \(N(F)\)) denote the genus of \(F\) (resp. the number of places of \(F\) of degree one). We give an explicit construction of a tower of function fields \(F_ 1 \subseteq F_ 2 \subseteq F_ 3 \subseteq \dots\) over \(\mathbb{F}_{q^ 2}\) such that the ratio \(N(F_ i)/ g(F_ i)\) tends to the Drinfeld-Vladut bound \(q-1\). This result is obtained in an elementary manner, without using modular curves or class field towers. It has applications in coding theory (Tsfasman-Vladut-Zink theorem).