Several infinite families of <i>p</i>-ary weakly regular bent functions

As an optimal combinatorial object, bent functions have been an interesting research object due to their important applications in cryptography, coding theory, and sequence design. The characterization and construction of bent functions are challenging problems in general. The objective of this paper is to present a construction of p-ary weakly regular bent functions from known weakly regular bent functions. This generalizes some earlier constructions of Boolean bent functions and p-ary bent functions, and produces several infinite families of p-ary weakly regular bent functions from known ones. Some infinite families of p-ary rotation symmetric bent functions are obtained as well.