b-Symbol Distance of Constacylic Codes of Length ps Over Fpm + uFpm

In this research paper, the repeated-root constacyclic codes over the chain ring F
_p
m + uF
_p
m are considered, where p is a prime and m > 0 is any integer. The b-symbol distance for prime power length, i.e. p
^s
is also studied for any integer s > 0. The Hamming and symbol-pair distances of all δ-constacyclic codes have been thoroughly studied in [18], where δ is an unit in the ring F
_p
m + uF
_p
m which is of the form ζ and φ + uφ, where 0 ≠ 6 φ, φ, ζ ∈ F
_p
m. In this paper, the b-symbol distance of all such δ-constacyclic codes of prime power length is computed for 1 ≤ b ≤ ⌊p/2⌋. Furthermore, as an application, all MDS b-symbol constacyclic codes of length p
^s
over F
_p
m + uF
_p
m are established.