Power sums over finite commutative unital rings (Q2406671)

The authors give explicit formulae for the sums \(S_k(R)=\sum_{r\in R}r^k\), \(k\geq 1\), where \(R\) is a finite commutative unital ring. Let \(|R|=p_1^{s_1}\dots p_k^{s_k}\), \(\text{char}(R)=p_1^{t_1}\dots p_k^{t_k}\), and \(R_i=R/p_i^{t_i}R\) for every \(i\in\{1,\dots,k\}\). Then \(R=R_1\oplus\dots\oplus R_k\) and in the final answer the expressions depend on the set of primes \(p_i\) such that \(S_k(R_i)\neq 0\). Here \(\text{char}(R_i)=p_i^{t_i}\), and if the characteristic is a prime-power but not a prime then \(S_k (R_i) = 0\). This implies a helpful restriction to the prime-power characteristic case. As an application they derive formulae for the quotient rings of the form \((\mathbb{Z} / n \mathbb{Z}) [x] /(f(x))\) for a polynomial \(f \in \mathbb{Z} [x]\).