Let p be a prime, ℤₚ be the finite field in p elements, k be a positive integer, and A be the multiplicative subgroup of nonzero kth powers in ℤₚ. The goal of this paper is to determine, for a given positive integer s, a value tₛ such that if |A| ≫ tₛ then every element of ℤₚ is a sum of s kth powers. We obtain $t₄=p^{22/39+ϵ}$, $t₅=p^{15/29+ϵ}$ and for s ≥ 6, $tₛ=p^{(9s+45)/(29s+33)+ϵ}$. For s ≥ 24 further improvements are made, such as $t_{32}=p^{5/16+ϵ}$ and $t_{128}=p^{1/4}$.

We extend Van der Corput's method for exponential sums to study an oscillating term appearing in the quantum theory of large atoms. We obtain an interpretation in terms of classical dynamics and we produce sharp asymptotic upper and lower bounds for the oscillations.