A note on additive characters of finite fields

Abstract

Let $\mathbb F_q$ be the finite field with $q$ elements, where $q$ is a prime power and, for each integer $n\ge 1$, let $\mathbb F_{q^n}$ be the unique $n$-degree extension of $\mathbb F_q$. The $\mathbb F_q$-orders of an element in $\mathbb F_{q^n}$ and an additive character over $\mathbb F_{q^n}$ have been extensively used in the proof of existence results over finite fields (e.g., the Primitive Normal Basis Theorem). In this note we provide an interesting relation between these two objects.