This volume represents the refereed proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Finite Fields and Applications (F q5) held at the University of Augsburg (Germany) from August 2-6, 1999, and hosted by the Department of Mathematics. The conference continued a series of biennial international conferences on finite fields, following earlier conferences at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (USA) in August 1991 and August 1993, the University ofGlasgow (Scotland) in July 1995, and the University ofWaterloo (Canada) in August 1997. The Organizing Committee of F q5 comprised Thomas Beth (University ofKarlsruhe), Stephen D. Cohen (University of Glasgow), Dieter Jungnickel (University of Augsburg, Chairman), Alfred Menezes (University of Waterloo), Gary L. Mullen (Pennsylvania State University), Ronald C. Mullin (University of Waterloo), Harald Niederreiter (Austrian Academy of Sciences), and Alexander Pott (University of Magdeburg). The program ofthe conference consisted offour full days and one halfday ofsessions, with 11 invited plenary talks andover80contributedtalks that re- quired three parallel sessions. This documents the steadily increasing interest in finite fields and their applications. Finite fields have an inherently fasci- nating structure and they are important tools in discrete mathematics. Their applications range from combinatorial design theory, finite geometries, and algebraic geometry to coding theory, cryptology, and scientific computing. A particularly fruitful aspect is the interplay between theory and applications which has led to many new perspectives in research on finite fields.

Poised to become the leading reference in the field, the Handbook of Finite Fields is exclusively devoted to the theory and applications of finite fields. More than 80 international contributors compile state-of-the-art research in this definitive handbook. Edited by two renowned researchers, the book uses a uniform style and format throughout and

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

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.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on the Arithmetic of Finite Fields, WAIFI 2008, held in Siena, Italy, in July 2008. The 16 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 34 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on structures in finite fields, efficient finite field arithmetic, efficient implementation and architectures, classification and construction of mappings over finite fields, and codes and cryptography.

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 Ninth International Conference on Finite Fields and Applications, held in Ireland, July 13-17, 2009. It includes survey papers by all invited speakers as well as selected contributed papers. Finite fields continue to grow in mathematical importance due to applications in many diverse areas. This volume contains a variety of results advancing the theory of finite fields and connections with, as well as impact on, various directions in number theory, algebra, and algebraic geometry. Areas of application include algebraic coding theory, cryptology, and combinatorial design theory.

Combinatorics and finite fields are of great importance in modern applications such as in the analysis of algorithms, in information and communication theory, and in signal processing and coding theory. This book contains survey articles on topics such as difference sets, polynomials, and pseudorandomness.

This book is based on the invited talks of the "RICAM-Workshop on Finite Fields and Their Applications: Character Sums and Polynomials" held at the Federal Institute for Adult Education (BIfEB) in Strobl, Austria, from September 2-7, 2012. Finite fields play important roles in many application areas such as coding theory, cryptography, Monte Carlo and quasi-Monte Carlo methods, pseudorandom number generation, quantum computing, and wireless communication. In this book we will focus on sequences, character sums, and polynomials over finite fields in view of the above mentioned application areas: Chapters 1 and 2 deal with sequences mainly constructed via characters and analyzed using bounds on character sums. Chapters 3, 5, and 6 deal with polynomials over finite fields. Chapters 4 and 9 consider problems related to coding theory studied via finite geometry and additive combinatorics, respectively. Chapter 7 deals with quasirandom points in view of applications to numerical integration using quasi-Monte Carlo methods and simulation. Chapter 8 studies aspects of iterations of rational functions from which pseudorandom numbers for Monte Carlo methods can be derived. The goal of this book is giving an overview of several recent research directions as well as stimulating research in sequences and polynomials under the unified framework of character theory.

Text for a one-semester course at the advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate level, or reference for algebraists and mathematicians interested in algebra, algebraic geometry, and number theory, examines counting or estimating numbers of solutions of equations in finite fields concentrating on top