Properties of p-ary bent functions that are at minimal distance from each other
It is proved that, in the case of prime p, the minimal Hamming distance between distinct p-ary bent functions in 2n variables is equal to p <sup>n</sup>. It is shown that for p > 2 the number of p-ary bent functions being on the minimal distance from a quadratic bent function is equal to p <sup>n</sup>(p <sup>n-1</sup> + 1) · · · (p+1)(p-1).