Equal Hamming Weights at Fixed Root Order and Applications to Constacyclic MDS Codes
Abstract
For a fixed positive integer n>1, we study the prime powers q coprime to n for which all monic irreducible factors of Φn over Fq have the same coefficient Hamming weight. Cyclotomic orbit coefficients give a finite, effective classification of these fields. Outside finitely many computable characteristics, every factor has the support of its characteristic-zero orbit polynomial; the uniform condition p>2φ(n) suffices. In each remaining characteristic, extension exponents reduce to divisors of ordn(p), and an integer variance identity expressed by polynomial gcd degrees decides equal weight. The same coefficient data determine the full weight distribution. As an application, we prove that an MDS constacyclic code with an irreducible generator forces every irreducible polynomial of the same root order to have full support, including factors associated with different constacyclic constants. This yields a uniform gcd and norm obstruction. We develop its short-multiplier extension, give a prime-order cubic family, and establish an explicit quadratic-residue exclusion without a prime-square alphabet or a near-square length hypothesis.
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BibTeX
@misc{zhu2026equal,
title = {{Equal Hamming Weights at Fixed Root Order and Applications to Constacyclic MDS Codes}},
author = {Li Zhu and Hongfeng Wu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.00637},
eprint = {2611.00637},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00637},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Equal Hamming Weights at Fixed Root Order and Applications to Constacyclic MDS Codes
AU - Li Zhu
AU - Hongfeng Wu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.00637
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00637
AB - For a fixed positive integer n>1, we study the prime powers q coprime to n for which all monic irreducible factors of Φ_n over F_q have the same coefficient Hamming weight. Cyclotomic orbit coefficients give a finite, effective classification of these fields. Outside finitely many computable characteristics, every factor has the support of its characteristic-zero orbit polynomial; the uniform condition p>2^φ(n) suffices. In each remaining characteristic, extension exponents reduce to divisors of ord_n(p), and an integer variance identity expressed by polynomial gcd degrees decides equal weight. The same coefficient data determine the full weight distribution. As an application, we prove that an MDS constacyclic code with an irreducible generator forces every irreducible polynomial of the same root order to have full support, including factors associated with different constacyclic constants. This yields a uniform gcd and norm obstruction. We develop its short-multiplier extension, give a prime-order cubic family, and establish an explicit quadratic-residue exclusion without a prime-square alphabet or a near-square length hypothesis.
ER -