On finite field analogues of determinants involving the Beta function

TL;DR

This paper explores finite field analogues of determinants involving the Beta function, focusing on Jacobi sums over finite fields and establishing explicit determinant formulas that mirror classical continuous cases.

Contribution

It provides new explicit determinant formulas for matrices of Jacobi sums over finite fields, extending classical Beta function determinant results to finite field settings.

Findings

Determinant of Jacobi sum matrix over finite fields equals (q-1)^{q-3}.

Finite field Jacobi sum determinants mirror classical Beta function determinants.

Explicit formula for determinants when q is an odd prime p.

Abstract

Motivated by the works of L. Carlitz, R. Chapman and Z.-W. Sun on cyclotomic matrices, in this paper, we investigate certain cyclotomic matrices concerning the Jacobi sums over finite fields, which can be viewed as finite field analogues of certain matrices involving the Beta function. For example, let $q>1$ be a prime power and let $\chi$ be a generator of the group of all multiplicative characters of $\mathbb{F}_q$. Then we prove that $$\det\left[J_q(\chi^i,\chi^j)\right]_{1\le i,j\le q-2}=(q-1)^{q-3},$$ where $J_q(\chi^i,\chi^j)$ is the Jacobi sum over $\mathbb{F}_q$. This is a finite analogue of $$\det [B(i,j)]_{1\le i,j\le n}=(-1)^{\frac{n(n-1)}{2}}\prod_{r=0}^{n-1}\frac{(r!)^3}{(n+r)!},$$ where $B$ is the Beta function. Also, if $q=p\ge5$ is an odd prime, then we show that $$\det \left[J_p(\chi^{2i},\chi^{2j})\right]_{1\le i,j\le (p-3)/2}=\frac{1+(-1)^{\frac{p+1}{2}}p}{4}\left(\frac{p-1}{2}\right)^{\frac{p-5}{2}}.$$