Double Character Sums over Subgroups and Intervals

Abstract

AbstractWe estimate double sums $$\begin{eqnarray}S_{{\it\chi}}(a,{\mathcal{I}},{\mathcal{G}})=\mathop{\sum }\limits_{x\in {\mathcal{I}}}\mathop{\sum }\limits_{{\it\lambda}\in {\mathcal{G}}}{\it\chi}(x+a{\it\lambda}),\quad 1\leq a<p-1,\end{eqnarray}$$ with a multiplicative character ${\it\chi}$ modulo $p$ where ${\mathcal{I}}=\{1,\dots ,H\}$ and ${\mathcal{G}}$ is a subgroup of order $T$ of the multiplicative group of the finite field of $p$ elements. A nontrivial upper bound on $S_{{\it\chi}}(a,{\mathcal{I}},{\mathcal{G}})$ can be derived from the Burgess bound if $H\geq p^{1/4+{\it\varepsilon}}$ and from some standard elementary arguments if $T\geq p^{1/2+{\it\varepsilon}}$, where ${\it\varepsilon}>0$ is arbitrary. We obtain a nontrivial estimate in a wider range of parameters $H$ and $T$. We also estimate double sums $$\begin{eqnarray}T_{{\it\chi}}(a,{\mathcal{G}})=\mathop{\sum }\limits_{{\it\lambda},{\it\mu}\in {\mathcal{G}}}{\it\chi}(a+{\it\lambda}+{\it\mu}),\quad 1\leq a<p-1,\end{eqnarray}$$ and give an application to primitive roots modulo $p$ with three nonzero binary digits.