On a problem of Perron

Abstract

It is shown that a partition $\mathfrak A\cup \mathfrak B$ of the set $\mathbb F_{p^m}^*=\mathbb F_{p^m}-\{0 \}$, with $|\mathfrak A|=|\mathfrak B|$, is the separation into squares and non squares, if and only if the elements of $\mathfrak A$ and $\mathfrak B$ satisfy certain additive properties, thus providing a purely additive characterization of the set of squares in $\mathbb F_{p^m}$.