A note on subtowers and supertowers of recursive towers of function fields (Q6056623)

Let \(q\) be a prime power and let \(F\) be an algebraic function field of one variable over a finite field \(\mathbb{F}_q\) of cardinality \(q\). \textit{Y. Ihara} [J. Fac. Sci., Univ. Tokyo, Sect. I A 28, 721--724 (1981; Zbl 0509.14019)] introduced the function \[A(q) = \limsup_{g \rightarrow \infty }N_q(g)/g,\] where \(N_q(g)\) is the maximum number of rational places that a function field over \(\mathbb{F}_q\) of genus \(g\) can have. This function measures how many rational places a function field can have with respect to its genus, and appears of great interest, not only for theoretical reasons but also because of its role for instance, in the so called Tsfasman, Vladut and Zink bound in coding theory. The exact values of \(A(q)\) is not known in general unless \(q\) is a square. In fact it is well-known that \(A(q^2) = q - 1\). Finding the values of \(A(q)\) when \(q\) is not a square has proven to be really hard, and most efforts has been directed during the years to give lower bounds for \(A(q)\). A way to obtain lower bound is clearly finding/constructing asymptotically good towers of function fields over \(\mathbb{F}_q\), where a tower is a sequence \(F = (F_0, F_1, \ldots)\) of function fields over a fixed finite field \(\mathbb{F}_q\), such that for each non negative \(n\) the extension \(F_{n+1}/F_n\) is finite and separable, \(\mathbb{F}_q\) is the full constant field of \(F_n\) and the genus \(g(F_n)\) of \(F_n\) goes to infinity along with \(n\). The limit \(\lambda(F) = \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} N_q(F_n)/g(F_n)\) exists and it is called the limit of the tower. Clearly, this limit provides a lower bound for the quantity \(A(q)\) and when \(\lambda(F) = A(q)\) the tower \(F\) is called optimal over \(\mathbb{F}_q\). A way of constructing towers in this way is to do that recursively, approached that has been used intensively in the literature (because of its providing also explicit equations). One clear issue when working with recursive towers is that many times different equations give rise to the same tower and it is not understand whether the chosen equation is the best one to work with, in the sense that this equation for the recursion may not be the most suitable for the determination of some invariants in the tower. It is with this mindset that supertowers appear. A \textit{subtower} \(E = (E_0,E_1, \ldots)\) of a tower \(F = (F_0, F_1, \ldots)\) is a tower in which each function field \(E_i\) is embedded in some \(F_j\), for \(j \leq i\) (\(F\) is called supertower of \(E\)). The problem cited above becomes: how to understand when two equations define the same tower and also if an equation defines a supertower or a subtower of an already studied tower or an easier one to study. This paper provides a systematic method to construct recursive subsequences and supersequences of function fields from recursive sequences and to check if two apparently different equations give rise to recursive sequences where one is a subsequence of the other. This is done in Section 3, and in Theorem 3.3 the authors prove that their method actually gives rise to a proper recursive subsequence of a given recursive sequence.