Related papers: Algebraic Methods in Discrete Analogs of the Kakey…

In one of their seminal articles on allowable sequences, Goodman and Pollack gave combinatorial generalizations for three problems in discrete geometry, one of which being the Dirac conjecture. According to this conjecture, any set of $n$…

Edoukou, Ling and Xing in 2010, conjectured that in \mathbb{P}^n(\mathbb{F}_{q^2}), n \geq 3, the maximum number of common points of a non-degenerate Hermitian variety \mathcal{U}_n and a hypersurface of degree d is achieved only when the…

If two closed Jordan curves in the plane have precisely one point in common, then it is called a {\em touching point}. All other intersection points are called {\em crossing points}. The main result of this paper is a Crossing Lemma for…

It is shown that for a constant $t\in \mathbb{N}$, every simple topological graph on $n$ vertices has $O(n)$ edges if it has no two sets of $t$ edges such that every edge in one set is disjoint from all edges of the other set (i.e., the…

In this paper we show that the number of distinct distances determined by a set of $n$ points on a constant-degree two-dimensional algebraic variety $V$ (i.e., a surface) in $\mathbb R^3$ is at least $\Omega\left(n^{7/9}/{\rm polylog}…

The famous Szemer\'{e}di-Trotter theorem states that any arrangement of $n$ points and $n$ lines in the plane determines $O(n^{4/3})$ incidences, and this bound is tight. In this paper, we prove the following Tur\'an-type result for…

We show that among any $n$ points in the unit cube one can find a triangle of area at most $n^{-2/3-c}$ for some absolute constant $c >0$. This gives the first non-trivial upper bound for the three-dimensional version of Heilbronn's…

Dirac and Motzkin conjectured that any set X of $n$ non-collinear points in the plane has an element incident with at least $\lceil \frac{n}{2} \rceil$ lines spanned by X. In this paper we prove that any set X of $n$ non-collinear points in…

Let $p$ be a polynomial in several non-commuting variables with coefficients in a field $K$ of arbitrary characteristic. It has been conjectured that for any $n$, for $p$ multilinear, the image of $p$ evaluated on the set $M_n(K)$ of $n$ by…

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

We study a variety of problems about homothets of sets related to the Kakeya conjecture. In particular, we show many of these problems are equivalent to the arithmetic Kakeya conjecture of Katz and Tao. We also provide a proof that the…

We prove that if $N$ points lie in convex position in the plane then they determine $\Omega(N^{5/4})$ distinct angles, provided that the points do not lie on a common circle. This is derived from a more general claim that if $N$ points in…

In this paper we prove a conjecture about the dimension of linear systems of surfaces of degree d in P^3 through at most eight multiple points in general position.

We prove that for any of a wide class of elliptic surfaces $X$ defined over a number field $k$, if there is an algebraic point on $X$ that lies on only finitely many rational curves, then there is an algebraic point on $X$ that lies on no…

A special case of a combinatorial theorem of De Bruijn and Erdos asserts that every noncollinear set of n points in the plane determines at least n distinct lines. Chen and Chvatal suggested a possible generalization of this assertion in…

It was conjectured by Edoukou in 2008 that a non-degenerate Hermitian threefold in $\mathbb{P}^4 (\mathbb{F}_{q^2})$ has at most $d(q^5+q^2) + q^3 + 1$ points in common with a threefold of degree $d$ defined over $\mathbb{F}_{q^2}$. He…

Let $P$ be a set of $m$ points and $L$ a set of $n$ lines in $\mathbb R^4$, such that the points of $P$ lie on an algebraic three-dimensional surface of degree $D$ that does not contain hyperplane or quadric components, and no 2-flat…

We reformulate a fundamental result due to Cook, Harbourne, Migliore and Nagel on the existence and irreduciblity of unexpected plane curves of a set of points $Z$ in $\mathbb{P}^2$, using the minimal degree of a Jacobian syzygy of the…

We study supersolvable line arrangements in ${\mathbb P}^2$ over the reals and over the complex numbers, as the first step toward a combinatorial classification. Our main results show that a nontrivial (i.e., not a pencil or near pencil)…

Ellis and the third author showed, verifying a conjecture of Frankl, that any $3$-wise intersecting family of subsets of $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ admitting a transitive automorphism group has cardinality $o(2^n)$, while a construction of Frankl…