Studying the locator polynomials of minimum weight codewords of BCH codes

Primitive binary cyclic codes of length n=2^m are considered. A BCH code with designed distance δ is denoted B(n,δ). A BCH code is always a narrow-sense BCH code. A codeword is identified with its locator polynomial, whose coefficients are the symmetric functions of the locators. The definition of the code by its zeros-set involves some properties for the power sums of the locators. Moreover, the symmetric functions and the power sums of the locators are related to Newton´s identities. An algebraic point of view is presented in order to prove or disprove the existence of words of a given weight in a code. The principal result is the true minimum distance of some BCH codes of length 255 and 511. which were not known. The minimum weight codewords of the codes B(n2^h -1) are studied. It is proved that the set of the minimum weight codewords of the BCH code B(n,2^m-2-1) equals the set of the minimum weight codewords of the punctured Reed-Muller code of length n and order 2, for any m