Additive Decompositions by Conjugacy Classes in $M_n(\mathbb{F}_q)$

Abstract

Let $n \geq 2$ be a positive integer, and $q$ be a prime power. We study the $number$ of additive decompositions of nonscalar matrices in the matrix ring $M_n(\mathbb{F}_q)$ as sums of elements from two prescribed conjugacy classes. Let $z \in M_n(\mathbb{F}_q)$ be nonscalar. We show that, except for the case $(n,q,\textrm{Tr}(z)) = (2,2,1)$, there exist conjugacy classes $X, Y \subset M_n(\mathbb{F}_q)$ such that the characteristic polynomial of $X$ is irreducible of degree $n$ and the characteristic polynomial of $Y$ is of the form $ (T- \lambda) h(T)$, where $\lambda \in \mathbb{F}_q$, $h$ is irreducible of degree $n-1$ and $h(\lambda) \neq 0$. These classes can be chosen so that $\textrm{Tr}(z) = \textrm{Tr}(X) + \textrm{Tr}(Y)$. For such $X$ and $Y$, let $$ N_{X,Y}(z) = \# \{ (x,y) \in X \times Y : x + y = z \}. $$ We prove the following estimate: $$ \left| N_{X,Y}(z) - q^{(n-1)^2} \right| \leq 42 q^{(n-1)^2 -1}. $$ Thus, for nonscalar matrices with matching trace, the number of such additive decompositions is $approximately$ the same, namely $q^{(n-1)^2}$, with an absolute error constant independent of $n$ and $q$.