Extensions of Wilson's lemma and the Ax-Katz theorem

Abstract

A classical result of A. Fleck states that if p is a prime, and n>0 and r are integers, then $$\sum_{k=r(mod p)}\binom {n}{k}(-1)^k=0 (mod p^{[(n-1)/(p-1)]}).$$ Recently R. M. Wilson used Fleck's congruence and Weisman's extension to present a useful lemma on polynomials modulo prime powers, and applied this lemma to reprove the Ax-Katz theorem on solutions of congruences modulo p and deduce various results on codewords in p-ary linear codes with weights. In light of the recent generalizations of Fleck's congruence given by D. Wan, and D. M. Davis and Z. W. Sun, we obtain new extensions of Wilson's lemma and the Ax-Katz theorem.

9 pages