In this paper, we give an explicit upper bound on [Formula: see text], the least primitive root modulo [Formula: see text]. Since a primitive root modulo [Formula: see text] is not primitive modulo [Formula: see text] if and only if it belongs to the set of integers less than [Formula: see text] which are [Formula: see text]th power residues modulo [Formula: see text], we seek the bounds for [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] to find [Formula: see text] which satisfies [Formula: see text], where, [Formula: see text] denotes the number of primitive roots modulo [Formula: see text] not exceeding [Formula: see text], and [Formula: see text] denotes the number of [Formula: see text]th powers modulo [Formula: see text] not exceeding [Formula: see text]. The method we mainly use is to estimate the character sums contained in the expressions of the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] above. Finally, we show that [Formula: see text] for all primes [Formula: see text]. This improves the recent result of Kerr et al.
On character sums in finite fields
