Restriction and Kakeya phenomena for finite fields

Gerd Mockenhaupt, Terence Tao

Published 2002-04-18, updated 2010-03-21Version 4

The restriction and Kakeya problems in Euclidean space have received much attention in the last few decades, and are related to many problems in harmonic analysis, PDE, and number theory. In this paper we initiate the study of these problems on finite fields. The restriction problem then becomes a question about general bounds for certain types of exponential sums, while the Kakeya problem has an algebraic geometry flavor, asking for the extent to which lines in different directions can overlap. In many cases the Euclidean arguments carry over easily to the finite setting (and are in fact somewhat cleaner), but there are some new phenomena in the finite case which deserve closer study.