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We study the automorphisms of a function field of genus g ≥ 2 over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p > 0. More precisely, we show that the order of a nilpotent subgroup G of its automorphism group is bounded by 16 (g – 1) when G is not a p-group. We show that if |G| = 16(g – 1), then g – 1 is a power of 2. Furthermore, we provide an infinite family of function fields attaining the bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The well-known Chowla and Zassenhaus conjecture, proved by Cohen in 1990, states that if p > ( d 2 − 3 d + 4 ) 2 , then there is no complete mapping polynomial f in F p [ x ] of degree d ≥ 2 . For arbitrary finite fields F q , a similar non-existence result was obtained recently by Işık, Topuzoğlu and Winterhof in terms of the Carlitz rank of f . Cohen, Mullen and Shiue generalized the Chowla–Zassenhaus–Cohen Theorem significantly in 1995, by considering differences of permutation polynomials. More precisely, they showed that if f and f + g are both permutation polynomials of degree d ≥ 2 over F p , with p > ( d 2 − 3 d + 4 ) 2 , then the degree k of g satisfies k ≥ 3 d / 5 , unless g is constant. In this article, assuming f and f + g are permutation polynomials in F q [ x ] , we give lower bounds for the Carlitz rank of f in terms of q and k . Our results generalize the above mentioned result of Işık et al. We also show for a special class of permutation polynomials f of Carlitz rank n ≥ 1 that if f + x k is a permutation over F q , with gcd ⁡ ( k + 1 , q − 1 ) = 1 , then k ≥ ( q − n ) / ( n + 3 ) . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]