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A Sidon set $M$ is a subset of $\mathbb{F}_2^t$ such that the sum of four distinct elements of $M$ is never 0. The goal is to find Sidon sets of large size. In this note we show that the graphs of almost perfect nonlinear (APN) functions with high linearity can be used to construct large Sidon sets. Thanks to recently constructed APN functions $\mathbb{F}_2^8\to \mathbb{F}_2^8$ with high linearity, we can construct Sidon sets of size 192 in $\mathbb{F}_2^{15}$, where the largest sets so far had size 152. Using the inverse and the Dobbertin function also gives larger Sidon sets as previously known. Moreover, we improve the upper bound for the linearity of arbitrary APN functions.

Finding the maximum size of a Sidon set in $\mathbb{F}_2^t$ is of research interest for more than 40 years. In order to tackle this problem we recall a one-to-one correspondence between sum-free Sidon sets and linear codes with minimum distance greater or equal 5. Our main contribution about codes is a new non-existence result for linear codes with minimum distance 5 based on a sharpening of the Johnson bound. This gives, on the Sidon set side, an improvement of the general upper bound for the maximum size of a Sidon set. Additionally, we characterise maximal Sidon sets, that are those Sidon sets which can not be extended by adding elements without loosing the Sidon property, up to dimension 6 and give all possible sizes for dimension 7 and 8 determined by computer calculations., Comment: Fixed an issue in Lemma 2.6 of the arXiv version

In this paper we consider further applications of $(n,m)$-functions for the construction of 2-designs. For instance, we provide a new application of the extended Assmus-Mattson theorem, by showing that linear codes of APN functions with the classical Walsh spectrum support 2-designs. On the other hand, we use linear codes and combinatorial designs in order to study important properties of $(n,m)$-functions. In particular, we give a new design-theoretic characterization of $(n,m)$-plateaued and $(n,m)$-bent functions and provide a coding-theoretic as well as a design-theoretic interpretation of the extendability problem for $(n,m)$-bent functions., Comment: This is the authors' version of the published manuscript. The main difference to the previous version is the updated sections 2.1 and 2.2

For a function $f$ from $\mathbb{F}_2^n$ to $\mathbb{F}_2^n$, the planarity of $f$ is usually measured by its differential uniformity and differential spectrum. In this paper, we propose the concept of vanishing flats, which supplies a combinatorial viewpoint on the planarity. First, the number of vanishing flats of $f$ can be regarded as a measure of the distance between $f$ and the set of almost perfect nonlinear functions. In some cases, the number of vanishing flats serves as an "intermediate" concept between differential uniformity and differential spectrum, which contains more information than differential uniformity, however less than the differential spectrum. Secondly, the set of vanishing flats forms a combinatorial configuration called partial quadruple system, since it convey detailed structural information about $f$. We initiate this study by considering the number of vanishing flats and the partial quadruple systems associated with monomials and Dembowski-Ostrom polynomials. In addition, we present an application of vanishing flats to the partition of a vector space into disjoint equidimensional affine spaces. We conclude the paper with several further questions and challenges., Comment: 12 pages, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Accepted

There are two construction methods of designs from $(n,m)$-bent functions, known as translation and addition designs. In this paper we analyze, which equivalence relation for Boolean bent functions, i.e. $(n,1)$-bent functions, and vectorial bent functions, i.e. $(n,m)$-bent functions with $2\le m\le n/2$, is coarser: extended-affine equivalence or isomorphism of associated translation and addition designs. First, we observe that similar to the Boolean bent functions, extended-affine equivalence of vectorial $(n,m)$-bent functions and isomorphism of addition designs are the same concepts for all even $n$ and $m\le n/2$. Further, we show that extended-affine inequivalent Boolean bent functions in $n$ variables, whose translation designs are isomorphic, exist for all $n\ge6$. This implies, that isomorphism of translation designs for Boolean bent functions is a coarser equivalence relation than extended-affine equivalence. However, we do not observe the same phenomenon for vectorial bent functions in a small number of variables. We classify and enumerate all vectorial bent functions in six variables and show, that in contrast to the Boolean case, one cannot exhibit isomorphic translation designs from extended-affine inequivalent vectorial $(6,m)$-bent functions with $m\in\{ 2,3 \}$., Comment: This is the author's version of the published in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory original article

The intersection distribution of a polynomial $f$ over finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ was recently proposed in Li and Pott (arXiv:2003.06678v1), which concerns the collective behaviour of a collection of polynomials $\{f(x)+cx \mid c \in \mathbb{F}_q\}$. The intersection distribution has an underlying geometric interpretation, which indicates the intersection pattern between the graph of $f$ and the lines in the affine plane $AG(2,q)$. When $q$ is even, the long-standing open problem of classifying o-polynomials can be rephrased in a simple way, namely, classifying all polynomials which have the same intersection distribution as $x^2$. Inspired by this connection, we proceed to consider the next simplest case and derive the intersection distribution for all degree three polynomials over $\mathbb{F}_q$ with $q$ both odd and even. Moreover, we initiate to classify all monomials having the same intersection distribution as $x^3$, where some characterizations of such monomials are obtained and a conjecture is proposed. In addition, two applications of the intersection distributions of degree three polynomials are presented. The first one is the construction of nonisomorphic Steiner triple systems and the second one produces infinite families of Kakeya sets in affine planes with previously unknown sizes., Comment: 24 pages, submitted

We propose the concepts of intersection distribution and non-hitting index, which can be viewed from two related perspectives. The first one concerns a point set $S$ of size $q+1$ in the classical projective plane $PG(2,q)$, where the intersection distribution of $S$ indicates the intersection pattern between $S$ and the lines in $PG(2,q)$. The second one relates to a polynomial $f$ over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$, where the intersection distribution of $f$ records an overall distribution property of a collection of polynomials $\{f(x)+cx \mid c \in \mathbb{F}_q\}$. These two perspectives are closely related, in the sense that each polynomial produces a $(q+1)$-set in a canonical way and conversely, each $(q+1)$-set with certain property has a polynomial representation. Indeed, the intersection distribution provides a new angle to distinguish polynomials over finite fields, based on the geometric property of the corresponding $(q+1)$-sets. Among the intersection distribution, we identify a particularly interesting quantity named non-hitting index. For a point set $S$, its non-hitting index counts the number of lines in $PG(2,q)$ which do not hit $S$. For a polynomial $f$ over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$, its non-hitting index gives the summation of the sizes of $q$ value sets $\{f(x)+cx \mid x \in \mathbb{F}_q\}$, where $c \in \mathbb{F}_q$. We derive bounds on the non-hitting index and show that the non-hitting index contains much information about the corresponding set and the polynomial. More precisely, using a geometric approach, we show that the non-hitting index is sufficient to characterize the corresponding point set and the polynomial when it is close to the lower and upper bounds. Moreover, we employ an algebraic approach to derive the intersection distribution of several families of point sets and polynomials, and compute the sizes of related Kakeya sets in affine planes., Comment: 28 pages, some corrections to version 1, Finite Fields and Their Applications, Accepted

In this paper we prove that in opposite to the cases of 6 and 8 variables, the Maiorana-McFarland construction does not describe the whole class of cubic bent functions in $n$ variables for all $n\ge 10$. Moreover, we show that for almost all values of $n$, these functions can simultaneously be homogeneous and have no affine derivatives.

In this paper, we give a partial solution to a new isomorphism problem about $2$-$(v,k,k-1)$ designs from disjoint difference families in finite fields and Galois rings. Our results are obtained by carefully calculating and bounding some block intersection numbers, and we give insight on the limitations of this technique. Moreover, we present results on cyclotomic numbers and on the structure of Galois rings of characteristic $p^2$., Comment: 20 pages. v2: Added additional results. Fixed a mistake in the main theorem. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1807.02055

The concept of formal duality was proposed by Cohn, Kumar and Sch\"urmann, which reflects a remarkable symmetry among energy-minimizing periodic configurations. This formal duality was later translated into a purely combinatorial property by Cohn, Kumar, Reiher and Sch\"urmann, where the corresponding combinatorial objects were called formally dual pairs. So far, except the results presented in Li and Pott (arXiv:1810.05433v3), we have little information about primitive formally dual pairs having subsets with unequal sizes. In this paper, we propose a direct construction of primitive formally dual pairs having subsets with unequal sizes in $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_4^{2m}$, where $m \ge 1$. This construction recovers an infinite family obtained in Li and Pott (arXiv:1810.05433v3), which was derived by employing a recursive approach. Although the resulting infinite family was known before, the idea of the direct construction is new and provides more insights which were not known from the recursive approach., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1810.05433. This version contains some minor corrections to version 1

The concept of formal duality was proposed by Cohn, Kumar and Sch\"urmann, which reflects a remarkable symmetry among energy-minimizing periodic configurations. This formal duality was later on translated into a purely combinatorial property by Cohn, Kumar, Reiher and Sch\"urmann, where the corresponding combinatorial objects were called formally dual pairs. Almost all known examples of primitive formally dual pairs satisfy that the two subsets have the same size. Indeed, prior to this work, there was only one known example having subsets with unequal sizes in $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_4^2$. Motivated by this example, we propose a lifting construction framework and a recursive construction framework, which generate new primitive formally dual pairs from known ones. As an application, for $m \ge 2$, we obtain $m+1$ pairwise inequivalent primitive formally dual pairs in $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_4^{2m}$, which have subsets with unequal sizes., Comment: Some corrections to version 2

Recently, two new constructions of $(v,k,k-1)$ disjoint difference families in Galois rings were presented by Davis, Huczynska, and Mullen and Momihara. Both were motivated by a well-known construction of difference families from cyclotomy in finite fields by Wilson. It is obvious that the difference families in the Galois ring and the difference families in the finite field are not equivalent. A related question which is in general harder to answer is whether the associated designs are isomorphic or not. In our case, this problem was raised by Davis, Huczynska and Mullen. In this paper we show that the $2$-$(v,k,k-1)$ designs arising from the difference families in Galois rings and those arising from the difference families in finite fields are nonisomorphic by comparing their block intersection numbers., Comment: 20 pages

Inspired by an experimental study of energy-minimizing periodic configurations in Euclidean space, Cohn, Kumar and Sch\"urmann proposed the concept of formal duality between a pair of periodic configurations, which indicates an unexpected symmetry possessed by the energy-minimizing periodic configurations. Later on, Cohn, Kumar, Reiher and Sch\"urmann translated the formal duality between a pair of periodic configurations into the formal duality of a pair of subsets in a finite abelian group. This insight suggests to study the combinatorial counterpart of formal duality, which is a configuration named formally dual pair. In this paper, we initiate a systematic investigation on formally dual pairs in finite abelian groups, which involves basic concepts, constructions, characterizations and nonexistence results. In contrast to the belief that primitive formally dual pairs are very rare in cyclic groups, we construct three families of primitive formally dual pairs in noncyclic groups. These constructions enlighten us to propose the concept of even sets, which reveals more structural information about formally dual pairs and leads to a characterization of rank three primitive formally dual pairs. Finally, we derive some nonexistence results about primitive formally dual pairs, which are in favor of the main conjecture that except two small examples, no primitive formally dual pair exists in cyclic groups., Comment: some corrections to version 2, Table A.1 updated

Bent functions can be classified into regular bent functions, weakly regular but not regular bent functions, and non-weakly regular bent functions. Regular and weakly regular bent functions always appear in pairs since their duals are also bent functions. In general this does not apply to non-weaky regular bent functions. However, the first known construction of non-weakly regular bent functions by Ce\c{s}melio\u{g}lu et {\it al.}, 2012, yields bent functions for which the dual is also bent. In this paper the first construction of non-weakly regular bent functions for which the dual is not bent is presented. We call such functions non-dual-bent functions. Until now, only sporadic examples found via computer search were known. We then show that with the direct sum of bent functions and with the construction by Ce\c{s}melio\u{g}lu et {\it al.} one can obtain infinitely many non-dual-bent functions once one example of a non-dual-bent function is known.

Let $C(d,k)$ and $AC(d,k)$ be the largest order of a Cayley graph and a Cayley graph based on an abelian group, respectively, of degree $d$ and diameter $k$. When $k=2$, it is well-known that $C(d,2)\le d^2+1$ with equality if and only if the graph is a Moore graph. In the abelian case, we have $AC(d,2)\le \frac{d^2}{2}+d+1$. The best currently lower bound on $AC(d,2)$ is $\frac{3}{8}d^2-1.45 d^{1.525}$ for all sufficiently large $d$. In this paper, we consider the construction of large graphs of diameter $2$ using generalized difference sets. We show that $AC(d,2)\ge \frac{25}{64}d^2-2.1 d^{1.525}$ for sufficiently large $d$ and $AC(d,2) \ge \frac{4}{9}d^2$ if $d=3q$, $q=2^m$ and $m$ is odd.

Recently, the interest in semifields has increased due to the discovery of several new families and progress in the classification problem. Commutative semifields play an important role since they are equivalent to certain planar functions (in the case of odd characteristic) and to modified planar functions in even characteristic. Similarly, commutative semifields are equivalent to relative difference sets. The goal of this survey is to describe the connection between these concepts. Moreover, we shall discuss power mappings that are planar and consider component functions of planar mappings, which may be also viewed as projections of relative difference sets. It turns out that the component functions in the even characteristic case are related to negabent functions as well as to $\mathbb{Z}_4$-valued bent functions., Comment: Survey paper for the RICAM workshop "Emerging applications of finite fields", 09-13 December 2013, Linz, Austria. This article will appear in the proceedings volume for this workshop, published as part of the "Radon Series on Computational and Applied Mathematics" by DeGruyter

Difference balanced functions from $F_{q^n}^*$ to $F_q$ are closely related to combinatorial designs and naturally define $p$-ary sequences with the ideal two-level autocorrelation. In the literature, all existing such functions are associated with the $d$-homogeneous property, and it was conjectured by Gong and Song that difference balanced functions must be $d$-homogeneous. First we characterize difference balanced functions by generalized difference sets with respect to two exceptional subgroups. We then derive several necessary and sufficient conditions for $d$-homogeneous difference balanced functions. In particular, we reveal an unexpected equivalence between the $d$-homogeneous property and multipliers of generalized difference sets. By determining these multipliers, we prove the Gong-Song conjecture for $q$ prime. Furthermore, we show that every difference balanced function must be balanced or an affine shift of a balanced function., Comment: 17 pages

Skew Hadamard difference sets are an interesting topic of study for over seventy years. For a long time, it had been conjectured the classical Paley difference sets (the set of nonzero quadratic residues in $\mathbb{F}_q$ where $q \equiv 3 \bmod{4}$) were the only example in abelian groups. In 2006, the first author and Yuan disproved this conjecture by showing that the image set of $\mathcal{D}_5(x^2,u)$ is a new skew Hadamard difference set in $(\mathbb{F}_{3^m},+)$ with $m$ odd, where $\mathcal{D}_n(x,u)$ denotes the first kind of Dickson polynomials of order $n$ and $u \in \mathbb{F}_q^*$. The key observation in the proof is that $\mathcal{D}_5(x^2,u)$ is a planar function from $\mathbb{F}_{3^m}$ to $\mathbb{F}_{3^m}$ for $m$ odd. Since then a few families of new skew Hadamard difference sets have been discovered. In this paper, we prove that for all $u \in \mathbb{F}_{3^m}^*$, the set $D_u := \{\mathcal{D}_7(x^2,u) : x \in \mathbb{F}_{3^m}^* \}$ is a skew Hadamard difference set in $(\mathbb{F}_{3^m}, +)$, where $m$ is odd and $m \not \equiv 0 \pmod{3}$. The proof is more complicated and different from that of Ding-Yuan skew Hadamard difference sets since $\mathcal{D}_7(x^2,u)$ is not planar in $\mathbb{F}_{3^m}$. Furthermore, we show that such skew Hadamard difference sets are inequivalent to all existing ones for $m = 5, 7$ by comparing the triple intersection numbers.

We present necessary and sufficient conditions for a Boolean function to be a negabent function for both even and odd number of variables, which demonstrate the relationship between negabent functions and bent functions. By using these necessary and sufficient conditions for Boolean functions to be negabent, we obtain that the nega spectrum of a negabent function has at most 4 values. We determine the nega spectrum distribution of negabent functions. Further, we provide a method to construct bent-negabent functions in $n$ variables ($n$ even) of algebraic degree ranging from 2 to $\frac{n}{2}$, which implies that the maximum algebraic degree of an $n$-variable bent-negabent function is equal to $\frac{n}{2}$. Thus, we answer two open problems proposed by Parker and Pott and by St\v{a}nic\v{a} \textit{et al.} respectively.

In 2008, Cusick {\it et al.} conjectured that certain elementary symmetric Boolean functions of the form $\sigma_{2^{t+1}l-1, 2^t}$ are the only nonlinear balanced ones, where $t$, $l$ are any positive integers, and $\sigma_{n,d}=\bigoplus_{1\le i_1<...

A new family of commutative semifields with two parameters is presented. Its left and middle nucleus are both determined. Furthermore, we prove that for any different pairs of parameters, these semifields are not isotopic. It is also shown that, for some special parameters, one semifield in this family can lead to two inequivalent planar functions. Finally, using similar construction, new APN functions are given.

The purpose of this paper is to present the extended definitions and characterizations of the classical notions of APN and maximum nonlinear Boolean functions to deal with the case of mappings from a finite group K to another one N with the possibility that one or both groups are non-Abelian., Comment: 17 pages

In this paper we prove that an abelian group contains $(2^{2m+1}(2^{m-1}+1), 2^m(2^m+1), 2^m)$-difference sets with $m\geqslant 3$ if and only if it contains an elementary abelian 2-group of order $2^{2m}$. Our proof shows that the method of constructing such difference sets is essentially unique., Comment: 18 pages

Maximum nonlinear functions on finite fields are widely used in cryptography because the coordinate functions have large distance to linear functions. More precisely, the Hamming distance to the characteristic functions of hyperplanes is large. One class of maximum nonlinear functions are the Gold power functions We characterize these functions in terms of the distance of their coordinate functions to characteristic functions of subspaces of codimension 2., Comment: 15 pages

We construct infinite classes of almost bent and almost perfect nonlinear polynomials, which are affinely inequivalent to any sum of a power function and an affine function., Comment: 22 pages, part of the paper was presented at WCC 2005

A new almost perfect nonlinear function (APN) on the finite field GF(2^10) which is not equivalent to any of the previously known APN mappings is constructed. This is the first example of an APN mapping which is not equivalent to a power mapping., Comment: to appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory