On the difference between permutation poynomials over finite fields

The well-known Chowla and Zassenhaus conjecture, proven by Cohen in 1990, states that if p > (d 2 − 3d + 4)2 , then there is no complete mapping polynomial f in Fp[x] of degree d ≥ 2. For arbitrary finite fields Fq, a similar non-existence result is obtained recently by I¸sık, Topuzo˘glu 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 Fp, with p > (d 2−3d+4)2 , then the degree k of g satisfies k ≥ 3d/5, unless g is constant. In this article, assuming f and f + g are permutation polynomials in Fq[x], we give lower bounds for k in terms of the Carlitz rank of f and q. Our results generalize the above mentioned result of I¸sık et al. We also show for a special class of polynomials f of Carlitz rank n ≥ 1 that if f + x k is a permutation over Fq, with gcd(k + 1, q − 1) = 1, then k ≥ (q − n)/(n + 3).