Li-Yuan Wang

Let $p$ be an odd prime and $x$ be an indeterminate. Recently, Z.-W. Sun proposed the following conjecture: $$\det\left[x+\left(\frac{j-i}{p}\right)\right]_{0\le i,j\le \frac{p-1}{2}}=\begin{cases} (\frac{2}{p})pb_px-a_p & \mbox{if}\ p\equiv 1\pmod4, 1 & \mbox{if}\ p\equiv 3\pmod4, \end{cases}$$ where $a_p$ and $b_p$ are rational numbers related to the fundamental unit and class number of the real quadratic field $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{p})$. In this paper, we confirm the above conjecture of Sun based on Vsemirnov's decomposition of Chapman's "evil determinant".

Inspired by the works of L. Carlitz and Z.-W. Sun on cyclotomic matrices, in this paper, we investigate certain cyclotomic matrices involving Gauss sums over finite fields, which can be viewed as finite field analogues of certain matrices related to the Gamma function. For example, let $q=p^n$ be an odd prime power with $p$ prime and $n\in\mathbb{Z}^+$. Let $ζ_p=e^{2π{\bf i}/p}$ and let $χ$ be a generator of the group of all mutiplicative characters of the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. For the Gauss sum $$G_q(χ^{r})=\sum_{x\in\mathbb{F}_q}χ^{r}(x)ζ_p^{{\rm Tr}_{\mathbb{F}_q/\mathbb{F}_p}(x)},$$ we prove that $$\det \left[G_q(χ^{2i+2j})\right]_{0\le i,j\le (q-3)/2}=(-1)^{α_p}\left(\frac{q-1}{2}\right)^{\frac{q-1}{2}}2^{\frac{p^{n-1}-1}{2}},$$ where $$α_p= \begin{cases} 1 & \mbox{if}\ n\equiv 1\pmod 2, (p^2+7)/8 & \mbox{if}\ n\equiv 0\pmod 2. \end{cases}$$