Authors: Dirk Hachenberger
Publish Date: 2015/03/14
Volume: 77, Issue: 2-3, Pages: 335-350
Abstract
For the Galois field extension mathbb F qn over mathbb F q we let PN nq denote the number of primitive elements of mathbb F qn which are normal over mathbb F q We derive lower bounds for PN 3q and PN 4q the number of primitive normal elements in cubic and quartic extensions Our reasoning relies on basic projective geometry A comparision with the exact numbers for PN 3q and PN 4q where qle 32 altogether 36 instances indicates that these bounds are very good we even achieve equality in 14 casesThis paper is dedicated to the memory of Scott Vanstone I thank Scott for many discussions on finite fields and finite geometries which once have raised my interest in studying specific normal bases I am also very grateful to Scott for once supporting my Habilitation at the University of Augsburg published as 7 Finally I wish to thank Thomas Gruber for supporting me with the computational results included in Tables 1 and 2
Keywords: