Character sums over affine spaces and applications

Abstract: Given a finite field

m a t h b b F_{q}

, a positive integer

n

and an

m a t h b b F_{q}

-affine space

m a t h c a l A s u b s e t e q m a t h b b F_{q^{n}}

, we provide a new bound on the sum

s u m_{a i n m a t h c a l A} c h i (a)

, where

c h i

a multiplicative character of

m a t h b b F_{q^{n}}

. We focus on the applicability of our estimate to results regarding the existence of special primitive elements in

m a t h b b F_{q^{n}}

. In particular, we obtain substantial improvements on previous works.

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