Automorphisms of Plane Curves defined from Chebychev polynomials

In this paper, we study the geometry and automorphism groups of the algebraic curves \(\mathcal{C}_d\) defined by the equation \( y^d = \varphi_d(x) \) over a field \( k \) with \(\operatorname{char}(k) \nmid 2d\), where \( \varphi_d(x) \) is the Chebyshev polynomial of degree \( d \). We classify the total inflection points of \(\mathcal{C}_d\), correcting and extending previous work on this. Additionally, we determine the automorphism groups of \(\mathcal{C}_d\) in several cases, namely for \( d=4 \), and for any $d$ such that \( 2d = q+1 \) or \( 4d = q+1 \) for an arbitrary power \( q \) of the prime \( p=\operatorname{char}(k) \). As an application, we use our results to show that certain maximal curves (over finite fields) of the same genus are not isomorphic.