The weight distribution of a class of cyclic codes containing a subclass with optimal parameters.

Let α be a primitive element of a finite field F r , where r = q m 1 m 2 and gcd ⁡ ( m 1 , m 2 ) = d , so α 1 = α r − 1 q m 1 − 1 and α 2 = α r − 1 q m 2 − 1 are primitive elements of F q m 1 and F q m 2 , respectively. Let e be a positive integer such that gcd ⁡ ( e , q m 2 − 1 q d − 1 ) = 1 , F q m 2 = F q ( α 2 e ) , and α 1 and α 2 e are not conjugates over F q . We define a cyclic code C = { c ( a , b ) : a ∈ F q m 1 , b ∈ F q m 2 } , c ( a , b ) = ( T 1 ( a α 1 i ) + T 2 ( b α 2 e i ) ) i = 0 n − 1 , where T i denotes the trace function from F q m i to F q for i = 1 , 2 . In this paper, we use Gauss sums to investigate the weight distribution of C , which generalizes the results of C. Li and Q. Yue in [13,14] . Furthermore, we explicitly determine the weight distribution of C if d = 1 , 2 . Moreover, we prove it is optimal three-weight achieving the Griesmer bound if d = 1 and gcd ⁡ ( m 2 − e m 1 , q − 1 ) = 1 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]