\(p\)-adic valuations associated to fibers and images of polynomial functions (Q2667090)

Chevalley-Warning theorem deals with certain polynomial equations in many variables over finite fields that have solutions. This article can be considered as an extension of the article by \textit{P. L. Clark} et al. [Expo. Math. 39, No. 4, 604--623 (2021; Zbl 1486.11146)] using Teichmüller character and \(p\)-adic valuation of multiplicative character sums. Let \(p\) be a prime number, let \(a \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}\) be a positive integer, and put \(q = p^{a}\). Let \(\mathbb{ F}_{q}\) be ``the'' (unique, up to isomorphism) finite field of order \(q\). Let \(F_{q} [t_{1}, \ldots, t_{n}]\) be the ring of polynomials in variables \(t_{1}, \ldots, t_{n}\) with coefficients in \(\mathbb{F}_{q}\) : the elements are finite formal \(\mathbb{F}_{q}-\) linear combinations of monomials \(t_{1}^{a_{1}}, t_{2}^{a_{2}}, \ldots, t_{n}^{a_{n}}\). The degree of such monomials is \(a_{1} + \cdots+ a_{n}\), and the degree of a nonzero polynomial is the maximum degree of a monomial term that appears with nonzero coefficient. \\ Let \(\mathbb{Q}_{p}\) be the field of \(p\)-adic rationals and \(\mathbb{Z}_{p}\) the ring of \(p\)-adic integers in \(\mathbb{Q}_{p}\). Denote by \(\mathbb{Q}_{q}\) the unique unramified extension of \(\mathbb{Q}_{p}\) with residue field \(\mathbb{ F}_{q}\) and \(\mathbb{ Z}_{q}\) the ring of \(p\)-adic integers in \(\mathbb{Q}_{q}\). Let \(\omega\) be the Teichmüller character of the multiplicative group \(\mathbb{ F}_{q}^{*}\) . For \( t \in \mathbb{ F}_{q}^{*}\) , the value \(\omega(t)\) is just the \((q - 1)\)-th root of unity in \(\mathbb{ Z}_{q}\) satisfying \(\omega(t)^{q}=\omega(t)\) and \(\omega(t) = t \bmod p\). Since the Teichmüller character \(\omega\) has order \(q - 1\), all the characters of \(\mathbb{ F}_{q}^{*}\) can be generated by \(\omega\), namely, \(\widehat{\mathbb{ F}_{q}^{*}}=\{ \omega^{k}: k=0,1,2, \ldots,q-2\}\) with \(\omega^{k}(t)=\omega(t)^{k}\) The following is the main result: Let \(f_{1}, \ldots, f_{r}, h_{1},\ldots,h_{r} \in\mathbb{ F}q [t_{1}, \ldots, t_{n}]\) be polynomials satisfying \(1 \leq \deg(h_{j}< \deg(f_{j}))\) for all \(1 \leq j \leq r\). Then we have \[\sum_{X \in \mathbb{F}_{q}^{n}}\prod_{j=1}^{r} \omega^{q-1}(f_{j}(X))\equiv \sum_{X \in \mathbb{F}_{q}^{n}}\prod_{j=1}^{r} \omega^{q-1}(f_{j}(X)+h_{j}(X)) \equiv 0 \pmod{q^{b}}\] where \(b= \)the least nonnegative integer more than or equal to \(\dfrac{n-\sum_{j=1}^{r}\deg(f_{j})}{\max_{1 \leq j \leq r} \deg f_{j}}\). The article gives a negative answer to an open question raised in the article cited above by providing a counterexample. There is more room for finding solutions to other open questions raised in the cited article of Clark et al.