A general method of constructing global function fields with many rational places (Q3840197)

In an earlier article [\textit{H. Niederreiter} and \textit{C. Xing}, Acta Arith. 81, No. 1, 81-100 (1997; Zbl 0886.11033)], the authors started with a function field over a finite field \({\mathbb F}_q\) and used narrow ray class field constructions to give function fields with many rational points over \({\mathbb F}_{q^r}\). Here, the authors generalize this construction somewhat by considering subgroups of a certain decomposition group rather than just the full decomposition group. Explicit examples are given for \(q=2,3,4\) to construct function fields with many rational points over \({\mathbb F}_4, {\mathbb F}_8, {\mathbb F}_9, {\mathbb F}_{16}\), and \({\mathbb F}_{27}\). This method leads to improvements in many cases on known lower bounds for the maximum number of rational points. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0891.00022].