Optimal Rank-Metric Codes with Rank-Locality from Drinfeld Modules

We introduce a new technique to construct rank-metric codes using the arithmetic theory of Drinfeld modules over global fields, and Dirichlet Theorem on polynomial arithmetic progressions. Using our methods, we obtain a new infinite family of optimal rank-metric codes with rank-locality, i.e. every code in our family achieves the information theoretical bound for rank-metric codes with rank-locality.