New Results on Permutation Binomials of Finite Fields

Abstract

After a brief review of existing results on permutation binomials of finite fields, we introduce the notion of equivalence among permutation binomials (PBs) and describe how to bring a PB to its canonical form under equivalence. We then focus on PBs of $\Bbb F_{q^2}$ of the form $X^n(X^{d(q-1)}+a)$, where $n$ and $d$ are positive integers and $a\in\Bbb F_{q^2}^*$. Our contributions include two nonexistence results: (1) If $q$ is even and sufficiently large and $a^{q+1}\ne 1$, then $X^n(X^{3(q-1)}+a)$ is not a PB of $\Bbb F_{q^2}$. (2) If $2\le d\mid q+1$, $q$ is sufficiently large and $a^{q+1}\ne 1$, then $X^n(X^{d(q-1)}+a)$ is not a PB of $\Bbb F_{q^2}$ under certain additional conditions. (1) partially confirms a recent conjecture by Tu et al. (2) is an extension of a previous result with $n=1$.