Roots of certain polynomials over finite fields (Q6166735)

This paper study the roots of the family of trinomials \(H_l(x)=x^{2q^l+1}+x+a\), defined over finite fields of characteristic 2. In this paper, the roots in \(\mathbb{F}_q^3\), for \(q=2^n\), of \(H_l(x)\), are determined, solving consequently some open problems of previous research about this matter. The paper is organized as follows: In the introductory section the authors describes the main results of the paper (theorem 1.1, proposition 1.2 and theorem 1.3) which describes the number of roots (\(N_l\)) and the set of roots (\(\Gamma _l\)) of the mentioned family. Section 2 contains some preliminary results related to the number of roots of \(H_l(x)\) in \(\mathbb{F}_q\) and \(\mathbb{F}_q^3\), for some relatively simple cases. Section 3 contains the notation that will be used throughout the rest of the paper, including a rational function \(\rho (x)\) and a family of polynomials \(f_i(x)\), \(i=0,1,2\); that will play a very important role. In section 4, proposition 4.1 characterize the roots in \(\mathbb{F}_q^3\) of \(H_l(x)\) by using the irreducibility of the polynomials \(f_i(x)\). Lemmas 4.2, 4.3, 4.5 and 4.6, about \(\rho(x), f_i(x), H_l(x)\), and their roots, are previously proved to subsequently prove proposition 4.1. In section 5, the proofs of theorem 1.1 and proposition 1.2 are included. To accomplish this, additional results related to particular elements \(w, c\) in \(\mathbb{F}_q\) and \(D_n(x)\) (the \(n\)-degree Dickson polynomial of the first kind) are previously proved in lemma 5.1, corollary 5.2, theorem 5.3, and lemma 5.4. Section 6 provides the proof of theorem 1.3 by firstly studying the roots of \(f_1(x)\) and \(f_2(x)\), and determining which of them divides \(H_l(x)\) in lemmas 6.1 and 6.2. Finally, section 7 is dedicated to some open problems related to these issues in [``Two classes of permutation trinomials over \(\mathbb{F}_q^3\) in characteristic two'', Finite Fields Appl. 94, Article ID 102354, (2024; \url{doi:10.1016/j.ffa.2023.102354})] by \textit{L. Zheng} et al.