Properties and Applications of Preimage Distributions of Perfect Nonlinear Functions

The preimage distributions of perfect nonlinear functions from an Abelian group of order $n$ to an Abelian group of order $3$ or $4$, respectively, are studied. Based on the properties of the preimage distributions of perfect nonlinear functions from an Abelian group of order $3^{r}$ to an Abelian group of order $3$, the weight distributions of the ternary linear codes $C_{Pi}$ from the perfect nonlinear functions $Pi (x)$ from $F_{3^{r}}$ to itself are determined. These results suggest that two open problems, proposed by Carlet, Ding, and Yuan in 2005 and 2006, respectively, are answered.