Choi, Sung-Tai; Hong, Seokbeom; No, Jong-Seon; Chung, Habong Differential spectrum of some power functions in odd prime characteristic. (English) Zbl 1272.11135 Finite Fields Appl. 21, 11-29 (2013). The main result of the paper is a formula of differential spectrum for two power functions. First, for \(f(x)=x^{\frac{p^k+1}{2}}\) defined over the finite field \(\mathbb F_{p^n}\) where \(p>2\) is a prime number. So, the result from [T. Helleseth, C. Rong and D. Sandberg, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 45, No. 2, 475–485 (1999; Zbl 0960.11051)] – where only an upper bound is computed – is improved. Second, for \(f(x)=x^{\frac{p^n+1}{p^m+1}+\frac{p^n-1}{2}}\) where \(p\equiv 3\pmod 4\) is a prime number, and \(n\) is an odd integer with \(m|n\). The authors consider that this is the first paper where the differential spectrum of power functions with an odd prime characteristic is determined exactly.As to remember, the characteristic of a function \(f:\mathbb F_{p^n}\longrightarrow \mathbb F_{p^n}\) is \[ \Delta_f=\max_{a\in \mathbb F_{p^n}^*,\, b\in\mathbb F_{p^n}}N_f(a,b) \] where \(N_f(a,b)\) is the number of solutions of the equation \(f(x+a)-f(x)=b\). The differential spectrum of the function \(f\) with \(\Delta_f=k\) is \((\omega_0,\omega_1,\dots,\omega_k)\) where \[ \omega_i=\text{card}\left(\{b\in \mathbb F_{p^n}\mid N_f(1,b)=i\}\right). \] In cryptography the mappings \(f\) with \(\Delta_f=1\) (perfect nonlinear) and \(\Delta_f=2\) (almost perfect nonlinear) are very important and widely studied. The paper offers a general method to obtain such type of functions. Reviewer: Adrian Atanasiu (Bucharest) Cited in 14 Documents MSC: 11T71 Algebraic coding theory; cryptography (number-theoretic aspects) 11R60 Cyclotomic function fields (class groups, Bernoulli objects, etc.) 12E20 Finite fields (field-theoretic aspects) 94A55 Shift register sequences and sequences over finite alphabets in information and communication theory 94A60 Cryptography Keywords:almost perfect nonlinear; cyclotomic class; differential spectrum; odd prime characteristic; perfect nonlinear; power function Citations:Zbl 0960.11051 PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{S.-T. Choi} et al., Finite Fields Appl. 21, 11--29 (2013; Zbl 1272.11135) Full Text: DOI