On the Gibson Bounds over Finite Fields

Abstract

We investigate the Pólya problem on the sign conversion between the permanent and the determinant over finite fields. The main attention is given to the sufficient conditions which guarantee non-existence of sing-conversion. In addition we show that F3 is the only field with the property that any matrix with the entries from the field is convertible. As a result we obtain that over finite fields there are no analogs of the upper Gibson barrier for the conversion and establish the lower convertibility barrier.