Crooked maps in [formula omitted

Abstract

A map f:F2n→F2n is called crooked if the set {f(x+a)+f(x):x∈F2n} is an affine hyperplane for every fixed a∈F2n∗ (where F2n is considered as a vector space over F2). We prove that the only crooked power maps are the quadratic maps x2i+2j with gcd(n,i−j)=1. This is a consequence of the following result of independent interest: for any prime p and almost all exponents 0⩽d⩽pn−2 the set {xd+γ(x+a)d:x∈Fpn} contains n linearly independent elements, where γ and a≠0 are arbitrary elements from Fpn.