On the number of distinct roots of a lacunary polynomial over finite fields (Q2662052)

A \textit{lacunary} polynomial is characterized by a large gap between the degrees of the highest term and the second highest term. The paper focuses on lacunary polynomials of the form \(f(x)=x^{(q-1)/d-l}+g(x)\in\mathbb F_q[x]\), where \(\mathbb F_q\) is the finite field with \(q\) elements, \(d\mid q-1\), \(l\ge 0\), \(0< g^\circ<(q-1)/d-l\), and \(g(0)\ne 0\). (The degree of a polynomial \(g\) is denoted by \(g^\circ\).) Let \(Z(f)\) denote the set of roots of \(f(x)\) in \(\mathbb F_q\). The objective is to improve the obvious degree bound \(|Z(f)|\le (q-1)/d-l\) on \(|Z(f)|\). The approach relies on two facts: (1) For \(x\in\mathbb F_q\) with \(x^{(q-1)/d}=\xi\), one has \(f(x)=\xi x^{-l}+g(x)\). (2) For \(h(x)\in\mathbb F_q[x]\) with \(h(0)\ne 0\), \(|Z(h)|=|Z(x^{h^\circ}h(x^{-1}))|\), where \(x^{h^\circ}h(x^{-1})\) is the reciprocal polynomial of \(h(x)\). Using an iteration based on these facts, three new upper bounds for \(|Z(f)|\) are obtained (Theorem~2.4 (1) -- (3)). When \(l\) and \(g^\circ\) satisfy certain inequalities, the new bounds improve the degree bound. Several examples are included to show that the new bounds are tight or close to being tight. There are a few additional results. Theorem~2.1 is a similar improvement of the degree bound for \(|Z(f)|\). Theorem~2.3 is an upper bound for the number of roots of a certain type of sparse polynomials over \(\mathbb F_q\). An upper bound for the number of zeros of a type of rational functions over \(\mathbb F_q\) is stated in Theorem~2.2 without proof.