Sparsity of curves and additive and multiplicative expansion of rational maps over finite fields

Abstract

For a prime $p$ and a polynomial $F(X,Y)$ over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_p$ of $p$ elements, we give upper bounds on the number of solutions $$ F(x,y)=0, \quad x\in\mathcal{A}, \ y\in \mathcal{B}, $$ where $\mathcal{A}$ and $\mathcal{B}$ are very small intervals or subgroups. These bounds can be considered as positive characteristic analogues of the result of Bombieri and Pila (1989) on sparsity of integral points on curves. As an application we prove that distinct consecutive elements in sequences generated compositions of several rational functions are not contained in any short intervals or small subgroups.