On explicit factors of Cyclotomic polynomials over finite fields

Abstract

We study the explicit factorization of $2^n r$-th cyclotomic polynomials over finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ where $q, r$ are odd with $(r, q) =1$. We show that all irreducible factors of $2^n r$-th cyclotomic polynomials can be obtained easily from irreducible factors of cyclotomic polynomials of small orders. In particular, we obtain the explicit factorization of $2^n 5$-th cyclotomic polynomials over finite fields and construct several classes of irreducible polynomials of degree $2^{n-2}$ with fewer than 5 terms. The reciprocals of these irreducible polynomials are irreducible polynomials of the form $x^{2^{n-2}} + g(x)$ such that the degree of $g(x)$ is small ($\leq 4$), which could have potential applications as mentioned by Gao, Howell, and Panario in \cite{GaoHowellPanario}.