Polynomial Values in Small Subgroups of Finite Fields

Abstract

For a large prime $p$, and a polynomial $f$ over a finite field $F_p$ of $p$ elements, we obtain a lower bound on the size of the multiplicative subgroup of $F_p^*$ containing $H\ge 1$ consecutive values $f(x)$, $x = u+1, \ldots, u+H$, uniformly over $f\in F_p[X]$ and an $u \in F_p$.