Curved Kakeya problems and the projective geometry of paths

We introduce a general framework for curved Kakeya problems in $\mathbb{R}^n$, encompassing those arising from H\"ormander-type oscillatory integrals. Every family of curves determines a spray geometry, which allows us to use the projective geometry of paths in the study of curved Kakeya problems. We focus on the two extremes of the "best" and "worst" possible behaviors of curved Kakeya sets. We characterize when the incidence structure underlying Wolff's hairbrush argument persists. In particular, we prove that the existence of many totally geodesic surfaces, as required by Wolff's hairbrush argument, is equivalent to projective flatness of the associated spray. Within this projectively flat class, Bourgain's condition provides a clean dichotomy: when it holds, the family is direction-equivalent to a Bochner--Riesz type family of lines and satisfies the Katz--Wolff condition, and thus the Wang--Zahl result is applicable; when it fails, every totally geodesic surface supports a two-dimensional Kakeya set. We also show that under an extra semi-algebraic assumption, a family of curves in $\mathbb{R}^3$ admits a curved Kakeya set of Hausdorff dimension $2$ if and only if it admits a curved Kakeya set contained in a surface. Equivalently, if this compression is absent, every associated curved Kakeya set has dimension strictly greater than $2$.