Counting Points over Finite Fields and Hypergeometric Functions

Abstract

It is a well known result that the number of points over a finite field on the Legendre family of elliptic curves can be written in terms of a hypergeometric function modulo $p$. In this paper, we extend this result, due to Igusa, to a family of monomial deformations of a diagonal hypersurface. We find explicit relationships between the number of points and generalized hypergeometric functions as well as their finite field analogues.