We apply the larger sieve to bound the number of $2\times 2$ matrices not having large order when reduced modulo the primes in an interval. Our motivation is the relation with linear recursive congruential generators. Basically our results establish that the probability of finding a matrix with large order modulo many primes drops drastically when a certain threshold involving the number of primes and the order is exceeded. We also study, for a given prime and a matrix, the existence of nearby non-similar matrices having large order. In this direction we find matrices of large order when the trace is restricted to take values in a short interval.
We deal with the construction of sequences of irreducible polynomials with coefficients in finite fields of even characteristic. We rely upon a transformation used by Kyuregyan in 2002, which generalizes the Q-transform employed previously by Varshamov and Garakov (1969) as well as by Meyn (1990) for the synthesis of irreducible polynomials. While in the iterative procedure described by Kyuregyan the coefficients of the initial polynomial of the sequence have to satisfy certain hypotheses, in the present paper these conditions are removed. We construct infinite sequences of irreducible polynomials of nondecreasing degree starting from any irreducible polynomial., Simone Ugolini., and Obsahuje seznam literatury