Counting roots of truncated hypergeometric series over finite fields

Abstract

We consider natural polynomial truncations of hypergeometric power series defined over finite fields. For these truncations, we establish asymptotic upper bounds of order $O(p^{11/12})$ on the number of roots in the prime field $\mathbb{F}_p$. We discuss the correspondence to families of elliptic curves and K3 surfaces of certain such hypergeometric polynomials, for which sharp bounds are obtained in some cases. We include some computations to illustrate and supplement our results.