English

Breaking the 3/2 barrier for unit distances in three dimensions

Metric Geometry 2022-03-02 v3 Computational Geometry Combinatorics

Abstract

We prove that every set of nn points in R3\mathbb{R}^3 spans O(n295/197+ϵ)O(n^{295/197+\epsilon}) unit distances. This is an improvement over the previous bound of O(n3/2)O(n^{3/2}). A key ingredient in the proof is a new result for cutting circles in R3\mathbb{R}^3 into pseudo-segments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.05118,
  title  = {Breaking the 3/2 barrier for unit distances in three dimensions},
  author = {Joshua Zahl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.05118},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

44 pages, 0 figures. v3: This version fixes an error in the proof of Lemma 3.2 that was pointed out by Micha Sharir. The rest of the paper remains unchanged

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:20:29.546Z