On power sums of matrices over a finite commutative ring

Abstract: In this paper we deal with the problem of computing the sum of the

k

-th powers of all the elements of the matrix ring

m a t h b b M_{d} (R)

with

d > 1

and

R

a finite commutative ring. We completely solve the problem in the case

R = m a t h b b Z / n m a t h b b Z

and give some results that compute the value of this sum if

R

is an arbitrary finite commutative ring

R

for many values of

k

and

d

. Finally, based on computational evidence and using some technical results proved in the paper we conjecture that the sum of the

k

-th powers of all the elements of the matrix ring

m a t h b b M_{d} (R)

is always

0

unless

d = 2

,

e x t r m c a r d (R) e q u i v 2 p m o d 4

,

1 < k e q u i v - 1, 0, 1 p m o d 6

and the only element

e i n R s e t m i n u s 0

such that

2 e = 0

is idempotent, in which case the sum is

e x t r m d i a g (e, e)

.

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