On a bound of Garcia and Voloch for the number of points of a Fermat curve over a prime field (Q2467312)

In this article the author proves that the number of points of the Fermat equation \(x^n+y^n=a\) with \(a \in \mathbb{F}_p^*\) and \(n \geq 2\) a divisor of \(p-1\) such that \((n-1/2)^4 \geq p-1\) is less than \(3 \cdot 2^{-2/3} \cdot n^{4/3} (p-1)^{2/3}\). The constant \(3 \cdot 2^{-2/3}\) improves the previous constant \(4\) of [J. Number Theory 30, No. 3, 345--356 (1988; Zbl 0671.14012)] and is obtained by optimization of the paramaters of a formula of the cited paper.