A Note on Hamming distance of constacyclic codes of length $p^s$ over $\mathbb F_{p^m} + u\mathbb F_{p^m}$

Abstract: For any prime $p$, $\lambda$-constacyclic codes of length $p^s$ over ${\cal R}=\mathbb{F}{p^m} + u\mathbb{F}{p^m}$ are precisely the ideals of the local ring ${\cal R}{\lambda}=\frac{{\cal R}[x]}{\left\langle x^{p^s}-\lambda \right\rangle}$, where $u^2=0$. In this paper, we first investigate the Hamming distances of cyclic codes of length $p^s$ over ${\cal R}$. The minimum Hamming distances of all cyclic codes of length $p^s$ over ${\cal R}$ are determined. Moreover, an isometry between cyclic and $\alpha$-constacyclic codes of length $p^s$ over ${\cal R}$ is established, where $\alpha$ is a nonzero element of $\mathbb{F}{p^m}$, which carries over the results regarding cyclic codes corresponding to $\alpha$-constacyclic codes of length $p^s$ over ${\cal R}$.