Rational points on cubic, quartic and sextic curves over finite fields (Q2663304)

Let \(q=p^{k}\), where \(p\) is a prime number. For a given curve \(C\) defined over finite field \(\mathbb{F}_{q}\), one can ask about the cardinality of the set \(C(\mathbb{F}_{q^{n}})\). Let us denote this cardinality by \(N_{n}(C)\). In general, the problem of finding an exact value of \(N_{n}(C)\) is a difficult task. In the paper the author present explicit computations of \(N_{n}(C)\) for certain specific classes of curves \(C\). The curves under consideration are the following: \(y^2=ax^6+b, y^4=ax^4+bx^2+c\) under suitable conditions on \(a, b, c\in\mathbb{F}_{q}\). The results are given in the terms of certain complex numbers \(\omega\) (satisfying \(|\omega|=q\)) and characters sums. Moreover, a connection between values of \(N(C_{1})\) and \(N(C_{2})\) for certain higher degree curves are presented.