Fq-linear codes over Fq-algebras

Huffman (2013) [12] studied ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-linear codes over ${\mathbb{F}}_{q^m}$ and he proved the MacWilliams identity for these codes with respect to ordinary and Hermitian trace inner products. Let S be a finite commutative ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-algebra. An ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-linear code over S of length n is an ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-submodule of $S^n$. In this paper, we study ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-linear codes over S. We obtain some bounds on minimum distance of these codes, and some large classes of MDR codes are introduced. We generalize the ordinary and Hermitian trace products over ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-algebras and we prove the MacWilliams identity with respect to the generalized form. In particular, we obtain Huffman's results on the MacWilliams identity. Among other results, we give a theory to construct a class of quantum codes and the structure of ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-linear codes over finite commutative graded ${\mathbb{F}}_q$-algebras.     

Highly nonlinear functions over finite fields

We consider a generalisation of a conjecture by Patterson and Wiedemann from 1983 on the Hamming distance of a function from ${\mathbb{F}}_q^n$ to ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ to the set of affine functions from ${\mathbb{F}}_q^n$ to ${\mathbb{F}}_q$. We prove the conjecture for each q such that the characteristic of ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ lies in a subset of the primes with density 1 and we prove the conjecture for all q by assuming the generalised Riemann hypothesis. Roughly speaking, we show the existence of functions for which the distance to the affine functions is maximised when n tends to infinity. This also determines the asymptotic behaviour of the covering radius of the $[q^n,n+1]$ Reed-Muller code over ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ and so answers a question raised by Leducq in 2013. Our results extend the case $q=2$, which was recently proved by the author and which corresponds to the original conjecture by Patterson and Wiedemann. Our proof combines evaluations of Gauss sums in the semiprimitive case, probabilistic arguments, and methods from discrepancy theory.     

On the existence of primitive completely normal bases of finite fields

Let ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ be the finite field of characteristic p with q elements and ${\mathbb{F}}_{q^n}$ its extension of degree n. We prove that there exists a primitive element of ${\mathbb{F}}_{q^n}$ that produces a completely normal basis of ${\mathbb{F}}_{q^n}$ over ${\mathbb{F}}_q$, provided that $n=p^{?}m$ with $(m,p)=1$ and $q>m$.     

Almost perfect nonlinear families which are not equivalent to permutations

An important problem on almost perfect nonlinear (APN) functions is the existence of APN permutations on even-degree extensions of ${\mathbb{F}}_2$ larger than 6. Browning et al. (2010) gave the first known example of an APN permutation on the degree-6 extension of ${\mathbb{F}}_2$. The APN permutation is CCZ-equivalent to the previously known quadratic Kim κ-function (Browning et al. (2009)). Aside from the computer based CCZ-inequivalence results on known APN functions on even-degree extensions of ${\mathbb{F}}_2$ with extension degrees less than 12, no theoretical CCZ-inequivalence result on infinite families is known. In this paper, we show that Gold and Kasami APN functions are not CCZ-equivalent to permutations on infinitely many even-degree extensions of ${\mathbb{F}}_2$. In the Gold case, we show that Gold APN functions are not equivalent to permutations on any even-degree extension of ${\mathbb{F}}_2$, whereas in the Kasami case we are able to prove inequivalence results for every doubly-even-degree extension of ${\mathbb{F}}_2$.     

Weight enumerators of reducible cyclic codes and their dual codes

Let ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ be a finite field and $n$ a positive integer. In this paper, we find a new combinatorial method to determine weight enumerators of reducible cyclic codes and their dual codes of length $n$ over ${\mathbb{F}}_q$, which just generalize results of Zhu et al. (2015); especially, we also give the weight enumerator of a cyclic code, which is viewed as a partial Melas code. Furthermore, weight enumerators obtained in this paper are all in the form of power of a polynomial.