On The Solvability of Bilinear Equations in Finite Fields

Igor E. Shparlinski

Published 2007-08-16, updated 2007-09-16Version 2

We consider the equation $$ ab + cd = \lambda, \qquad a\in A, b \in B, c\in C, d \in D, $$ over a finite field $F_q$ of $q$ elements, with variables from arbitrary sets $ A, B, C, D \subseteq F_q$. The question of solvability of such and more general equations has recently been considered by D. Hart and A. Iosevich, who, in particular, proved that if $$ #A #B #C #D \gg q^3, $$ then above equation has a solution for any $\lambda \in F_q^*$. Here we show that using bounds of multiplicative character sums allows us to extend the class of sets which satisfy this property.