New bounds on the dimensions of planar distance sets

We prove new bounds on the dimensions of distance sets and pinned distance sets of planar sets. Among other results, we show that if $A\subset\mathbb{R}^2$ is a Borel set of Hausdorff dimension $s>1$, then its distance set has Hausdorff dimension at least $37/54\approx 0.685$. Moreover, if $s\in (1,3/2]$, then outside of a set of exceptional $y$ of Hausdorff dimension at most $1$, the pinned distance set $\{ |x-y|:x\in A\}$ has Hausdorff dimension $\ge \tfrac{2}{3}s$ and packing dimension at least $\tfrac{1}{4}(1+s+\sqrt{3s(2-s)}) \ge 0.933$. These estimates improve upon the existing ones by Bourgain, Wolff, Peres-Schlag and Iosevich-Liu for sets of Hausdorff dimension $>1$. Our proof uses a multi-scale decomposition of measures in which, unlike previous works, we are able to choose the scales subject to certain constrains. This leads to a combinatorial problem, which is a key new ingredient of our approach, and which we solve completely by optimizing certain variation of Lipschitz functions.