Enumeration of triangles in quartic residue graphs (Q2882729)

Let \(p \equiv 1\bmod 8\) be a prime number. Define a graph \(G_4(p)\) using the elements of the finite field \(\mathbb F_p\) with \(p\) elements as vertices, and connect the vertices \(a\) and \(b\) with an edge if \(a-b\) or \(b-a\) is a fourth power in \(\mathbb F_p\). Extending the work of \textit{B. Maheswari} and \textit{M. Lavaku} [``Enumeration of triangles and Hamilton cycles in quadratic residue Cayley graphs'', Chamchuri J. Math. 1, 95--103 (2009)] the authors show that the number of triangles in \(G_4(p)\) is given by \(T(G_4(p)) = \frac{p(p-1)}{24} N_4(p)\), where \(N_4(p)\) denotes the number of consecutive quartic residues modulo \(p\). Using quartic Jacobi sums, this number is evaluated to be NEWLINE\[NEWLINEN_4(p) = \frac 1{16}(p-9-4a-2(-1)^{(p-1)/4}(1+a)).NEWLINE\]