On the Hansen-Mullen conjecture for self-reciprocal irreducible polynomials (Q439094)

There has been extensive work on the existence of irreducible polynomials (or even primitive ones) over finite fields with certain coefficients prescribed. Here the topic is extended to irreducible self-reciprocal polynomials. Let \(q\) be a power of an odd prime. An irreducible, self-reciprocal polynomial \(Q\) over the finite field \(\mathbb F_q\) must have even degree, so write \(Q=\sum_{i=0}^{2n} Q_ix^i\). The authors prove that for \(n\geq 2\), \(1\leq k\leq n\) and \(a\in\mathbb F_q\), there exists a monic, irreducible self-reciprocal polynomial \(Q\) of degree \(2n\) with \(Q_k=a\) if NEWLINE\[NEWLINE q^{\frac{n-k-1}{2}}\geq \frac{16}{5}k(k+5)+\frac{1}{2}. NEWLINE\]NEWLINE The proof uses Weil's bound for character sums as well as a bound on a different character sum due to the first author.