Character sums over affine spaces and applications (Q2168928)

Let \(q=p^n\) be a prime power and \(\mathbb{F}_q\) be the finite field with \(q\) elements. When proving existence and distribution results with the help of characters, it is frequently required to provide non-trivial estimates to sums \(s(\chi ,S):=\sum _{y\in S}\chi (y)\), \(S\subseteq \mathbb{F}_q\). Given a positive integer \(n\) and an \(\mathbb{F}_q\)-affine space \(\mathcal{A}\subseteq \mathbb{F}_{q^n}\), the author shows that a result of \textit{N. M. Katz} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 2, No. 2, 197--199 (1989; Zbl 0672.10026)] provides a new bound on the sum \(\sum _{a\in \mathcal{A}}\chi (a)\), where \(\chi\) is a multiplicative character of \(\mathbb{F}_{q^n}\). The paper focuses on the applicability of this estimate to results regarding the existence of special primitive elements in \(\mathbb{F}_{q^n}\).