Solving \(X^{q+1}+X+a=0\) over finite fields (Q1995227)

The authors study the equation \(P_{a}(X):=X^{q+1}+X+a=0\) over a finite field \(\mathbb F_{Q}\), where \(Q=p^n, q=p^k, p\) is a prime and \(a\in \mathbb F_{Q}^{\star}\). There are many papers devoted to finding the \(\mathbb F_{Q}\)-roots of \(P_{a}(X)\) as this equation arises in a natural way in some problems related to Galois theory, finite geometries, construction of error-correcting codes etc. It was proved by A. W. Bluher that the number \(N_a\) of \(\mathbb F_{Q}\)-roots of \(P_a(X)\) is \(0, 1, 2\) or \(p^{\gcd(n, k)}+1\) and later a series of criteria were found by other authors for the number \(N_a\). The problem of describing all \(\mathbb F_{Q}\)-roots of \(P_a(X)\) was solved only for \(p=2\) and \(\gcd(n, k)=1\) by K. H. Kim and S. Mesnager. In this paper, the authors obtained (without any restriction on \(p\) and \(\gcd(n, k)\)) new criteria for the number \(N_a\) and give explicit expressions for the roots in cases of 1 or 2 \(\mathbb F_Q\)-roots. They also pointed out a parametrization of the coefficients \(a^{,}s\) and expressed all the roots using this parametrization in case of \(p^{\gcd(n, k)}+1\) rational \(\mathbb F_{Q}\)-roots.