Permutation polynomials of the form x+c*Tr(x^k)

Abstract

Let F_{q^n} be the field of order q^n, and let Tr be the trace map from F_{q^n} to its q-element subfield. We exhibit nine sequences of polynomials of the form f(x):=x+c*Tr(x^k), with c in F_{q^n}, such that for each polynomial the function F_{q^n}-->F_{q^n} given by c-->f(c) is a permutation of F_{q^n}. We also computed all permutation polynomials of this form over finite fields of size less than 5000, and found that our examples comprise all examples with n>1 except for some simple cases where the polynomial induces a homomorphism of the additive group of F_{q^n}, along with a few sporadic examples. One intriguing feature is that our proofs of the different sequences use various different methods, including a new variant of Dobbertin's method among others.