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Every Boolean bent function $f$ can be written either as a concatenation $f=f_1||f_2$ of two complementary semi-bent functions $f_1,f_2$; or as a concatenation $f=f_1||f_2||f_3||f_4$ of four Boolean functions $f_1,f_2,f_3,f_4$, all of which are simultaneously bent, semi-bent, or 5-valued spectra-functions. In this context, it is essential to ask: When does a bent concatenation $f$ (not) belong to the completed Maiorana-McFarland class $\mathcal{M}^\#$? In this article, we answer this question completely by providing a full characterization of the structure of $\mathcal{M}$-subspaces for the concatenation of the form $f=f_1||f_2$ and $f=f_1||f_2||f_3||f_4$, which allows us to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions so that $f$ is outside $\mathcal{M}^\#$. Based on these conditions, we propose several explicit design methods of specifying bent functions outside $\mathcal{M}^\#$ in the special case when $f=g||h||g||(h+1)$, where $g$ and $h$ are bent functions., Comment: This is the authors' version of the camera-ready version to be presented at the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2024)

The concatenation of four Boolean bent functions $f=f_1||f_2||f_3||f_4$ is bent if and only if the dual bent condition $f_1^* + f_2^* + f_3^* + f_4^* =1$ is satisfied. However, to specify four bent functions satisfying this duality condition is in general quite a difficult task. Commonly, to simplify this problem, certain connections between $f_i$ are assumed, as well as functions $f_i$ of a special shape are considered, e.g., $f_i(x,y)=x\cdot\pi_i(y)+h_i(y)$ are Maiorana-McFarland bent functions. In the case when permutations $\pi_i$ of $\mathbb{F}_2^m$ have the $(\mathcal{A}_m)$ property and Maiorana-McFarland bent functions $f_i$ satisfy the additional condition $f_1+f_2+f_3+f_4=0$, the dual bent condition is known to have a relatively simple shape allowing to specify the functions $f_i$ explicitly. In this paper, we generalize this result for the case when Maiorana-McFarland bent functions $f_i$ satisfy the condition $f_1(x,y)+f_2(x,y)+f_3(x,y)+f_4(x,y)=s(y)$ and provide a construction of new permutations with the $(\mathcal{A}_m)$ property from the old ones. Combining these two results, we obtain a recursive construction method of bent functions satisfying the dual bent condition. Moreover, we provide a generic condition on the Maiorana-McFarland bent functions stemming from the permutations of $\mathbb{F}_2^m$ with the $(\mathcal{A}_m)$ property, such that their concatenation does not belong, up to equivalence, to the Maiorana-McFarland class. Using monomial permutations $\pi_i$ of $\mathbb{F}_{2^m}$ with the $(\mathcal{A}_m)$ property and monomial functions $h_i$ on $\mathbb{F}_{2^m}$, we provide explicit constructions of such bent functions. Finally, with our construction method, we explain how one can construct homogeneous cubic bent functions, noticing that only very few design methods of these objects are known.

In this article, we provide the first systematic analysis of bent functions $f$ on $\mathbb{F}_2^{n}$ in the Maiorana-McFarland class $\mathcal{MM}$ regarding the origin and cardinality of their $\mathcal{M}$-subspaces, i.e., vector subspaces on which the second-order derivatives of $f$ vanish. By imposing restrictions on permutations $\pi$ of $\mathbb{F}_2^{n/2}$, we specify the conditions, such that Maiorana-McFarland bent functions $f(x,y)=x\cdot \pi(y) + h(y)$ admit a unique $\mathcal{M}$-subspace of dimension $n/2$. On the other hand, we show that permutations $\pi$ with linear structures give rise to Maiorana-McFarland bent functions that do not have this property. In this way, we contribute to the classification of Maiorana-McFarland bent functions, since the number of $\mathcal{M}$-subspaces is invariant under equivalence. Additionally, we give several generic methods of specifying permutations $\pi$ so that $f\in\mathcal{MM}$ admits a unique $\mathcal{M}$-subspace. Most notably, using the knowledge about $\mathcal{M}$-subspaces, we show that using the bent 4-concatenation of four suitably chosen Maiorana-McFarland bent functions, one can in a generic manner generate bent functions on $\mathbb{F}_2^{n}$ outside the completed Maiorana-McFarland class $\mathcal{MM}^\#$ for any even $n\geq 8$. Remarkably, with our construction methods it is possible to obtain inequivalent bent functions on $\mathbb{F}_2^8$ not stemming from two primary classes, the partial spread class $\mathcal{PS}$ and $\mathcal{MM}$. In this way, we contribute to a better understanding of the origin of bent functions in eight variables, since only a small fraction, of which size is about $2^{76}$, stems from $\mathcal{PS}$ and $\mathcal{MM}$, whereas the total number of bent functions on $\mathbb{F}_2^8$ is approximately $2^{106}$.

The purpose of this paper is to give explicit constructions of vectorial hyper-bent functions in the $\cP\cS_{ap}^{\#}$ class. It seems that the explicit constructions were so far known only for very special cases. To this end, we present a sufficient and necessary condition of this family of vectorial functions to be hyper-bent. The conditions are expressed in terms of group ring. Using this characterization, explicit constructions of vectorial hyper-bent functions of the $\cP\cS_{ap}^{\#}$ class via balanced functions are proposed. Furthermore, exact number of vectorial hyper-bent functions in the $\cP\cS_{ap}^{\#}$ class is found. The results improve some previous work. Moreover, we solve a problem of counting vectorial hyper-bent functions left by Muratovi\'c-Ribi\'c, Pasalic and Ribi\'c in [{\em IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory}, 60 (2014), pp. 4408-4413]., Comment: 12 pages

In 2018, Pott, at al. have studied in [IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Volume: 64, Issue: 1, 2018] the maximum number of bent components of vectorial function. They have presented serval nice results and suggested several open problems in this context. This paper is in the continuation of their study in which we solve two open problems raised by Pott et al. and partially solve an open problem raised by the same authors. Firstly, we prove that for a vectorial function, the property of having the maximum number of bent components is invariant under the so-called CCZ equivalence. Secondly, we prove the non-existence of APN plateaued having the maximum number of bent components. In particular, quadratic APN functions cannot have the maximum number of bent components. Finally, we present some sufficient conditions that the vectorial function defined from $\mathbb{F}_{2^{2k}}$ to $\mathbb{F}_{2^{2k}}$ by its univariate representation: $$ \alpha x^{2^i}\left(x+x^{2^k}+\sum\limits_{j=1}^{\rho}\gamma^{(j)}x^{2^{t_j}} +\sum\limits_{j=1}^{\rho}\gamma^{(j)}x^{2^{t_j+k}}\right)$$ has the maximum number of {components bent functions, where $\rho\leq k$}. Further, we show that the differential spectrum of the function $ x^{2^i}(x+x^{2^k}+x^{2^{t_1}}+x^{2^{t_1+k}}+x^{2^{t_2}}+x^{2^{t_2+k}})$ (where $i,t_1,t_2$ satisfy some conditions) is different from the binomial function $F^i(x)= x^{2^i}(x+x^{2^k})$ presented in the article of Pott et al. Finally, we provide sufficient and necessary conditions so that the functions $$Tr_1^{2k}\left(\alpha x^{2^i}\left(Tr^{2k}_{e}(x)+\sum\limits_{j=1}^{\rho}\gamma^{(j)}(Tr^{2k}_{e}(x))^{2^j} \right)\right) $$ are bent., Comment: 17 pages

In this paper, we first present a new secondary construction of bent functions (building new bent functions from two already defined ones). Furthermore, we apply the construction using as initial functions some specific bent functions and then provide several concrete constructions of bent functions. The second part of the paper is devoted to the constructions of resilient functions. We give a generalization of the indirect sum construction for constructing resilient functions with high nonlinearity. In addition, we modify the generalized construction to ensure a high nonlinearity of the constructed function., Comment: 27 pages