On restriction estimates for spheres in finite fields

Alex Iosevich, Doowon Koh, Sujin Lee, Thang Pham, Chun-Yen Shen

Published 2018-06-29Version 1

In this paper we study the finite field Fourier restriction/extension estimates for spheres in even dimensions $d\ge 4.$ We show that the $L^p\to L^4$ extension estimate for spheres with non-zero radius holds for any $p\ge \frac{4d}{3d-2},$ which gives the optimal range of $p$. This improves the previous known $L^{(12d-8)/(9d-12)+\varepsilon} \to L^4$ extension result for all $\varepsilon>0$. The key new ingredient is to connect the additive energy estimate for subsets of spheres in $d$ dimensions to the sum-product graph on the subsets of paraboloids in $d+1$ dimensions. Moreover, we also obtain the optimal $L^p\to L^2$ restriction estimate for spheres with zero radius in even dimensions. This problem can be viewed as the restriction problem for cones which had been studied by Mockenhaupt and Tao. Our result extends their work in dimension three to specific higher even dimensions. The key observation is to reduce the problem to certain estimates of the Gauss sum.