This book is devoted entirely to the theory of finite fields.

This monograph provides a self-contained presentation of the foundations of finite fields, including a detailed treatment of their algebraic closures. It also covers important advanced topics which are not yet found in textbooks: the primitive normal basis theorem, the existence of primitive elements in affine hyperplanes, and the Niederreiter method for factoring polynomials over finite fields. We give streamlined and/or clearer proofs for many fundamental results and treat some classical material in an innovative manner. In particular, we emphasize the interplay between arithmetical and structural results, and we introduce Berlekamp algebras in a novel way which provides a deeper understanding of Berlekamp's celebrated factorization algorithm. The book provides a thorough grounding in finite field theory for graduate students and researchers in mathematics. In view of its emphasis on applicable and computational aspects, it is also useful for readers working in information and communication engineering, for instance, in signal processing, coding theory, cryptography or computer science.

The theory of finite fields encompasses algebra, combinatorics, and number theory and has furnished widespread applications in other areas of mathematics and computer science. This book is a collection of selected topics in the theory of finite fields and related areas. The topics include basic facts about finite fields, polynomials over finite fields, Gauss sums, algebraic number theory and cyclotomic fields, zeros of polynomials over finite fields, and classical groups over finite fields. The book is mostly self-contained, and the material covered is accessible to readers with the knowledge of graduate algebra; the only exception is a section on function fields. Each chapter is supplied with a set of exercises. The book can be adopted as a text for a second year graduate course or used as a reference by researchers.

Finite fields Combinatorics Algebraic coding theory Cryptography Background in number theory and abstract algebra Hints for selected exercises References Index.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Finite Fields and their Applications (Fq11), held July 22-26, 2013, in Magdeburg, Germany. Finite Fields are fundamental structures in mathematics. They lead to interesting deep problems in number theory, play a major role in combinatorics and finite geometry, and have a vast amount of applications in computer science. Papers in this volume cover these aspects of finite fields as well as applications in coding theory and cryptography.

This book is mainly devoted to some computational and algorithmic problems in finite fields such as, for example, polynomial factorization, finding irreducible and primitive polynomials, the distribution of these primitive polynomials and of primitive points on elliptic curves, constructing bases of various types and new applications of finite fields to other areas of mathematics. For completeness we in clude two special chapters on some recent advances and applications of the theory of congruences (optimal coefficients, congruential pseudo-random number gener ators, modular arithmetic, etc.) and computational number theory (primality testing, factoring integers, computation in algebraic number theory, etc.). The problems considered here have many applications in Computer Science, Cod ing Theory, Cryptography, Numerical Methods, and so on. There are a few books devoted to more general questions, but the results contained in this book have not till now been collected under one cover. In the present work the author has attempted to point out new links among different areas of the theory of finite fields. It contains many very important results which previously could be found only in widely scattered and hardly available conference proceedings and journals. In particular, we extensively review results which originally appeared only in Russian, and are not well known to mathematicians outside the former USSR.

The theory of finite fields, whose origins can be traced back to the works of Gauss and Galois, has played a part in various branches in mathematics. Inrecent years we have witnessed a resurgence of interest in finite fields, and this is partly due to important applications in coding theory and cryptography. The purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to some of these recent developments. It should be of interest to a wide range of students, researchers and practitioners in the disciplines of computer science, engineering and mathematics. We shall focus our attention on some specific recent developments in the theory and applications of finite fields. While the topics selected are treated in some depth, we have not attempted to be encyclopedic. Among the topics studied are different methods of representing the elements of a finite field (including normal bases and optimal normal bases), algorithms for factoring polynomials over finite fields, methods for constructing irreducible polynomials, the discrete logarithm problem and its implications to cryptography, the use of elliptic curves in constructing public key cryptosystems, and the uses of algebraic geometry in constructing good error-correcting codes. To limit the size of the volume we have been forced to omit some important applications of finite fields. Some of these missing applications are briefly mentioned in the Appendix along with some key references.