Skew Polycyclic Codes over $\frac{\mathbb{F}_{p^m}[u]}{\langle u^t \rangle}$
Incremental theoretical contribution to algebraic coding theory, correcting and extending prior results on skew constacyclic codes over finite chain rings.
This paper studies the structure of skew polycyclic codes over finite chain rings, providing a refined characterization of left ideals in skew polynomial rings. It corrects omissions in prior work by including necessary conditions for disjointness of code classes and computes torsion codes for specific parameters.
Let $R^t$ denote the finite chain ring $\frac{\mathbb{F}_{p^m}[u]}{\langle u^t \rangle},$ where $p$ is a prime and $t$ is a positive integer. In this article, for a prime $p$ and an automorphism $θ$ of $\mathbb{F}_{p^m}$, we give the structure of the left ideals of the ring $\frac{R^t[x,Θ]}{\langle f(x) \rangle},$ where $f(x)$ is in the center of the skew polynomial ring $R^t[x,Θ]$ and $Θ$ is an automorphism of $R^t$ that extends $θ$ with $Θ(u)=u$. These left ideals are also referred to as skew polycyclic codes associated to $f(x).$ In particular, when the central element \( f(x)\) is \(x^{np^s}-λ\), where $λ=λ_0+uλ_1+\cdots +u^{t-1}λ_{t-1}$ with $λ_0\ne0,$ and \( n=1,2 \), we give a more refined form of the left ideals (which are also called skew constacyclic codes). Moreover, the case $λ_1 \neq 0$ is analyzed in detail, yielding a simpler form of generators that reveals a more refined structural characterization of the left ideals. As an application, for $n=1,t=3$ and $n=2,t=2$ we give a full description of the left ideals by including certain necessary conditions that were omitted in available literature, preventing the different classes of left ideals from being mutually disjoint and in certain cases, we also compute $i$-th torsion codes.