Monomial Dynamical Systems over Finite Fields

An important problem in the theory of finite dynamical systems is to link the structure of a system with its dynamics. This paper contains such a link for a family of nonlinear systems over an arbitrary finite field. For systems that can be described by monomials, information about the limit cycle structure can be obtained from the structure of the monomials. In particular, the paper contains a sufficient condition for a monomial system to have only fixed points as limit cycles. The condition is derived by reducing the problem to the study of a boolean monomial system and a linear system over a finite ring.