The k-subset sum problem over finite fields

Abstract The subset sum problem is an important theoretical problem with many applications, such as in coding theory, cryptography, graph theory and other fields. One of the many aspects of this problem is to answer the solvability of the k -subset sum problem. It has been proven to be NP-hard in general. However, if the evaluation set has some special algebraic structure, it is possible to obtain some good conclusions. Zhu, Wan and Keti proposed partial results of this problem over two special kinds of evaluation sets. We generalize their conclusions in this paper, and propose asymptotical results of the solvability of the k -subset sum problem by using estimates of additive character sums over the evaluation set, together with the Brun sieve and the new sieve proposed by Li and Wan. We also apply the former two examples as application of our results.