On primitive elements of finite fields avoiding affine hyperplanes (Q2238922)

The authors prove the following result on the existence of primitive elements in finite fields \(\mathbb{F}_{q^n}\) of order \(q^n\), \(n\ge 2\): Let \(\mathcal{A}_1,\mathcal{A}_2,\ldots,\mathcal{A}_n\) be \(\mathbb{F}_q\)-affine hyperplanes of \(\mathbb{F}_{q^n}\) in general position. Then \(\mathbb{F}_{q^n}\setminus \bigcup_{i=1}^n \mathcal{A}_i\) contains a primitive element of \(\mathbb{F}_{q^n}\) provided that one of the following conditions holds: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] \(q\ge 16\); \item[2.] \(q=13\) and \(n\not= 4\); \item[3.] \(q=11\) and \(n\not\in \{4,6,12\}\); \item[4.] \(q \in \{7,8,9\}\) and \(n\) is large enough. \end{itemize}