On power sums of matrices over a finite commutative ring

In this paper, we deal with the problem of computing the sum of the [Formula: see text]th powers of all the elements of the matrix ring [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] a finite commutative ring. We completely solve the problem in the case [Formula: see text] and give some results that compute the value of this sum if [Formula: see text] is an arbitrary finite commutative ring for many values of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Finally, based on computational evidence and using some technical results proved in this paper, we conjecture that the sum of the [Formula: see text]th powers of all the elements of the matrix ring [Formula: see text] is always [Formula: see text] unless [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and the only element [Formula: see text] such that [Formula: see text] is idempotent, in which case the sum is [Formula: see text].