Related papers: The Finite Field Kakeya Problem

A Besicovitch set is a set which contains a unit line segment in any direction. It is known that the Minkowski and Hausdorff dimensions of such a set must be greater than or equal to 5/2 in \R^3. In this paper we show that the Minkowski…

A set of points $N\subseteq \mathbb{F}_q^d$ is a Nikodym set if, for any $x\in \mathbb{F}_q^d$, there is a line $\ell$ through $x$ such that $\ell\setminus\{x\}\subseteq N$. We conjecture that $|N|=q^d-O_d(q^{d/(d-1)})$ and prove it under…

We prove the joints conjecture, showing that for any $N$ lines in ${\Bbb R}^3$, there are at most $O(N^{{3 \over 2}})$ points at which 3 lines intersect non-coplanarly. We also prove a conjecture of Bourgain showing that given $N^2$ lines…

introduce {\sc Planar Disjoint Paths Completion}, a completion counterpart of the Disjoint Paths problem, and study its parameterized complexity. The problem can be stated as follows: given a, not necessarily connected, plane graph $G,$ $k$…

We prove the Kakeya set conjecture for $\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ for general $N$ as stated by Hickman and Wright [HW18]. This entails extending and combining the techniques of Arsovski [Ars21a] for $N=p^k$ and the author and Dvir [DD21] for…

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…

In a projective plane over a finite field, complete $(k,n)$-arcs with few characters are rare but interesting objects with several applications to finite geometry and coding theory. Since almost all known examples are large, the…

An old problem in discrete geometry, originating with Kupitz, asks whether there is a fixed natural number $k$ such that every finite set of points in the plane has a line through at least two of its points where the number of points on…

A K^n_2-set is a set of zero Lebesgue measure containing a translate of every plane in an (n-2)-dimensional manifold in Gr(n,2), where the manifold fulfills a curvature condition. We show that this is a natural class of sets with respect to…

A subset U of a group G is called k-universal if U contains a translate of every k-element subset of G. We give several nearly optimal constructions of small k-universal sets, and use them to resolve an old question of Erdos and Newman on…

We prove that every Kakeya set in $\mathbb{R}^3$ formed from lines of the form $(a,b,0) + \operatorname{span}(c,d,1)$ with $ad-bc=1$ must have Hausdorff dimension $3$; Kakeya sets of this type are called $SL_2$ Kakeya sets. This result was…

We extend the "method of multiplicities" to get the following results, of interest in combinatorics and randomness extraction. (A) We show that every Kakeya set (a set of points that contains a line in every direction) in $\F_q^n$ must be…

Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a finite field of order $q$, where $q$ is a power of a prime. For a set $A \subset \mathbb{F}_q$, under certain structural restrictions, we prove a new explicit lower bound on the size of the product set $A(A + 1)$.…

We give upper and lower bounds on the number of points on abelian varieties over finite fields, and lower bounds specific to Jacobian varieties. We also determine exact formulas for the maximum and minimum number of points on Jacobian…

We derive Maximal Kakeya estimates for functions over $\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ proving the Maximal Kakeya conjecture for $\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ for general $N$ as stated by Hickman and Wright [HW18]. The proof involves using polynomial…

Kakeya sets are compact subsets of $\mathbb{R}^n$ that contain a unit line segment pointing in every direction. The Kakeya conjecture states that such sets must have Hausdorff dimension $n$. The property of stickiness was first discovered…

Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ denote a finite field of $q$ elements. Define a set $B\subset\mathbb{F}_q^n$ to be Nikodym if for each $x\in B^{c}$, there exists a line $L$ such that $L\cap B^c=\{x\}.$ The main purpose of this note is to show that the…

Let $\mathcal{L}$ be a family of lines and let $\mathcal{P}$ be a family of $k$-planes in $\mathbb{F}^n$ where $\mathbb{F}$ is a field. In our first result we show that the number of joints formed by a $k$-plane in $\mathcal{P}$ together…

Defining distances over finite fields formally by $||x-y||:=(x_1-y_1)^2+\cdots + (x_d-y_d)^2$ for $x,y\in \mathbb{F}_q^d$, distance problems naturally arise in analogy to those studied by Erd\H{o}s and Falconer in Euclidean space. Given a…

An $m$-general set in $AG(n,q)$ is a set of points such that any subset of size $m$ is in general position. A $3$-general set is often called a capset. In this paper, we study the maximum size of an $m$-general set in $AG(n,q)$,…