On the number of elements with prescribed norm and trace

Let F_q be the finite field with cardinality q, where q is a prime power. Given a finite field extension F_q^n over F_q and a,b in (F_q)^{*}, we investigate in this article the number N_n(a,b) of elements in F_q^n whose norm equals a and trace equals b. Our approach to probe N_n(a,b) is to connect it with the number of rational points on certain Artin-Schreier curve. After establish an improvement of the Hasse-Weil bound for that Artin-Schreier curve, we improve the known estimates for N_n(a,b) when (roughly speaking) n \geq \sqrt{q}-1. Moreover, we use this approach to improve the bound given by Moisio and Wan for the number of rational points on the toric Calabi-Yau variety studied by Rojas-Leon and Wan in 2011. We finish the paper with explicit calculations of N_n(a,b) and an application to the number of irreducible monic polynomials in an arithmetic progression.