Windmill polynomials over fields of characteristic two (Q753791)

\textit{B. J. M. Smeets} and \textit{W. G. Chambers} [Windmill pn-sequence generators. IEEE Proc. Part E, 136, 401-404 (1989)] have designed a windmill arrangement of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) to generate pn-sequences over GF(2) with high speed. When the windmill has v vanes, the associated minimal feedback polynomial (having degree n, relatively prime to v) can be taken to have the shape \(f_ 1(x^ v)+x^ nf_ 2(x^{-v})\), where the polynomials \(f_ 1\) and \(f_ 2\) have degree \(\leq [n/v]\). Their numerical evidence, when v is divisible by 4, suggests that, surprisingly, there are no such windmill polynomials which are irreducible if \(n\equiv \pm 3(mod 8)\), while about twice as many irreducible and primitive windmill polynomials as they exprected occur if \(n\equiv \pm 1(mod 8)\). A discussion of this behaviour is presented here with proofs. The brief explanation is that the Galois group of the underlying generic windmill polynomial over GF(4) is equal to the alternating group \(A_ n\).