The distribution of the values of a rational function modulo a big prime (Q558174)

Let \(p\) be a prime number. For \(y\in{\mathbb F}_p\) let \(j(y)\in\{0,1,\ldots,p-1\}\) be the least representative of \(y\). For a rational function \(r(X)\in{\mathbb F}_p(X)\) let \(\tilde{r}:{\mathbb F}_p\rightarrow \{0,1,\ldots,p-1\}\) be the map \(\tilde{r}(x)=j(r(x))\) if \(x\) is not a pole of \(r(X)\), and \(\tilde{r}(x)=0\) if \(x\) is a pole of \(r(X)\). For positive integers \(a,b\) and a real number \(t\) let \(D(a,b,p,r,t)\) be the number of elements of the set \({\mathcal M}(a,b,p,r,t):=\{x\in{\mathbb F}_p:b\tilde{r}(x+1)-a\tilde{r}(x)<tp\}\). The author is interested in an asymptotic formula for \(D(a,b,p,r,t)\). He proves that for \(r(X)=\frac{f(X)}{g(X)}\) which is not a linear polynomial, with \(f,g\in{\mathbb F}_p[X]\), \(\text{deg}f, \text{deg}g\leq d\) it holds \[ D(a,b,p,r,t)=pG(t,a,b)+ O_{a,b,d}(\sqrt{p}\log^2p), \] with an explicitly constructed elementary function \(G(t,a,b)\). As a consequence he shows that the inequality \(\tilde{r}(x)>\tilde{r}(x+1)\) is valid for about half of the values of \(x\in{\mathbb F}_p\): It holds \[ \#\{x\in{\mathbb F}_p:\tilde{r}(x)>\tilde{r}(x+1)\}=\frac{p}{2}+ O_d(\sqrt{p}\log^2p). \] As another application he obtains an asymptotic result for all the even moments of the distance between \(\tilde{r}(x+1)\) and \(\tilde{r}(x)\): Let \(k\) be a positive integer. Then it holds \[ M(p,r,2k):=\sum_{x\in{\mathbb F}_p} (\tilde{r}(x+1)-\tilde{r}(x))^{2k}= \frac{p^{2k+1}}{(k+1)(2k+1)}+ O_{k,d}(p^{\frac{2k+1}{2}}\log^2p). \] In particular for \(k=1\) one has \[ M(p,r,2)=\frac{p^3}{6}+ O_d(p^{\frac{5}{2}}\log^2p), \] which means that in quadratic average \[ | \tilde{r}(x+1)-\tilde{r}(x)| \sim\frac{p}{\sqrt{6}}. \]