Elliptic curves and explicit enumeration of irreducible polynomials with two coefficients pre\-scribed (Q938776)

Let \(\mathbb F_q\) be a finite field of characteristic \(p\). This paper studies the number \(N\) of irreducible polynomials \(x^m+a_{m-1}x^{m-1}+\cdots +a_0\in \mathbb F_q[x]\) with some coefficients prescribed. They determine \(N\) when (i) \(p=2\), \(a_{m-1}=0\) and \(a_{m-3}\) fixed; and (ii) \(p=2\) or \(3\), \(a_1=0\) and \(a_{m-1}\) fixed. Case (i) is a partial extension, from \(q=2\) to \(2^r\), of \textit{R. W. Fitzgerald} and \textit{J. L. Yucas} [Finite Fields Appl. 9, No. 3, 286--299 (2003; Zbl 1097.11058)] . For case (ii) and \(p=3\), their formula for \(N\) is in terms of certain Kronecker class numbers and is only explicit for \(m\leq 10\). The authors use several techniques: fibre products of super-singular elliptic curves, Kloosterman sums, cubic exponential sums, Dickson polynomials and the weight distributions of the dual of the binary two-error-correcting BCH code of length \(q-1\) as well as the binary and ternary Melas codes of length \(q-1\).