The weight distributions of a class of cyclic codes (Q714458)

Let \(p\) be a prime, \(s\) a positive integer and \(q = p^s\). Let \(m\) be a positive integer and \(r = q^m\). Furthermore, let \(\alpha\) be a generator of \(\mathrm{GF}(r)^*\). Let \(h\) be a positive divisor of \(q-1\) and \(e\) be a factor of \(h\). Define \(g= \alpha^{\frac{q-1}{h}}\) and \(n = \frac{h(r-1)}{q-1}\) \(\beta= \alpha^{\frac{r-1}{e}}\), \(N = \operatorname{gcd}(m,\frac{e(q-1)}{h})\). Define the cyclic code \(C_{q,m,h,e} = \{(\operatorname{Tr}(ag^i+b(\beta g)^i))^{n-1}_{i=0} \mid a,b \in \mathrm{GF}(r) \}\), where \(\operatorname{Tr}\) is the trace function from \(\mathrm{GF}(r)\) to \(\mathrm{GF}(q\)). The paper determines the weight distribution for the case \(e=4\) and \(N=2\). First, the problem of finding the weight distribution is reduced to the evaluation of certain character sums, and counting points on a well-known elliptic curve. The formulas (16)--(19) are derived using the fact that \(\eta_{ua^2} = \eta_u\), which indeed holds if \(N=2\). In (19), the left-hand side should read \(\lambda(-\beta^4b,b)\). I did not check the tables but assume that the authors did the math correctly for all cases. The authors conclude the paper giving some examples.