Explicit Evaluation of Certain Exponential Sums of Quadratic Functions over \Bbb F_{p^n}, p Odd

Abstract: Let

p

be an odd prime and let

f (x) = s u m_{i = 1}^{k} a_{i} x^{p^{a l p h a_{i}} + 1} i n B b b F_{p^{n}} [x]

, where

0 l e a l p h a_{1} < ... < a l p h a_{k}

. We consider the exponential sum

S (f, n) = s u m_{x i n B b b F_{p^{n}}} e_{n} (f (x))

, where

e_{n} (y) = e^{2 p i i e x t {T r}_{n} (y) / p}

,

y i n B b b F_{p^{n}}

,

e x t {T r}_{n} = e x t {T r}_{B b b F_{p^{n}} / B b b F_{p}}

. There is an effective way to compute the nullity of the quadratic form

e x t {T r}_{m n} (f (x))

for all integer

m > 0

. Assuming that all such nullities are known, we find relative formulas for

S (f, m n)

in terms of

S (f, n)

when

u_{p} (m) l e m i n u_{p} (a l p h a_{i}) : 1 l e i l e k

, where

u_{p}

is the

p

-adic order. We also find an explicit formula for

S (f, n)

when

u_{2} (a l p h a_{1}) = ... = u_{2} (a l p h a_{k}) < u_{2} (n)

. These results generalize those by Carlitz and by Baumert and McEliece. Parallel results with

p = 2

were obtained in a previous paper by the second author.

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