Related papers: Incidences between points and lines in three dimen…
We discuss a unified approach to a class of geometric combinatorics incidence problems in $2D$, of the Erd\"os distance type. The goal is obtaining the second moment estimate, that is given a finite point set $S$ and a function $f$ on…
We study the minimum number of distinct distances between point sets on two curves in $R^3$. Assume that one curve contains $m$ points and the other $n$ points. Our main results: (a) When the curves are conic sections, we characterize all…
Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^3$, no three collinear and not all coplanar. If at most $n-k$ are coplanar and $n$ is sufficiently large, the total number of planes determined is at least $1 + k…
A widely investigated subject in combinatorial geometry, originated from Erd\H{o}s, is the following. Given a point set $P$ of cardinality $n$ in the plane, how can we describe the distribution of the determined distances? This has been…
Let $p_1,p_2,p_3$ be three non-collinear points in the plane, and let $P$ be a set of $n$ other points in the plane. We show that the number of distinct distances between $p_1,p_2,p_3$ and the points of $P$ is $\Omega(n^{6/11})$, improving…
It is shown that the number of distinct types of three-point hinges, defined by a real plane set of $n$ points is $\gg n^2\log^{-3} n$, where a hinge is identified by fixing two pair-wise distances in a point triple. This is achieved via…
In this paper, we prove that a set of $N$ points in ${\bf R}^2$ has at least $c{N \over \log N}$ distinct distances, thus obtaining the sharp exponent in a problem of Erd\"os. We follow the set-up of Elekes and Sharir which, in the spirit…
We improve the current best bound for distinct distances on non-ruled algebraic surfaces in ${\mathbb R}^3$. In particular, we show that $n$ points on such a surface span $\Omega\left(n^{32/39-\varepsilon}\right)$ distinct distances, for…
The Erd\H os unit distance conjecture in the plane says that the number of pairs of points from a point set of size $n$ separated by a fixed (Euclidean) distance is $\leq C_{\epsilon} n^{1+\epsilon}$ for any $\epsilon>0$. The best known…
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…
In 1946, Erd\H{o}s posed the distinct distance problem, which seeks to find the minimum number of distinct distances between pairs of points selected from any configuration of $n$ points in the plane. The problem has since been explored…
Given sets $\mathcal{P}, \mathcal{Q} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^2$ of sizes $m$ and $n$ respectively, we are interested in the number of distinct distances spanned by $\mathcal{P} \times \mathcal{Q}$. Let $D(m, n)$ denote the minimum number of…
The Erd\H{o}s distinct distance problem is a ubiquitous problem in discrete geometry. Less well known is Erd\H{o}s' distinct angle problem, the problem of finding the minimum number of distinct angles between $n$ non-collinear points in the…
We give a shorter proof of a slightly weaker version of a theorem of Nets Katz and the author. We prove that if a set of $L$ lines in $\mathbb{R}^3$ contains at most $L^{1/2}$ lines in any low degree algebraic surface, then the number of…
Chen and Chv\'atal conjectured in 2008 that in any finite metric space either there is a line containing all the points - a universal line -, or the number of lines is at least the number of points. This is a generalization of a classical…
We bound the number of incidences between points and spheres in finite vector spaces by bounding the sum of the number of points in the pairwise intersections of the spheres. We obtain new incidence bounds that are interesting when the…
We consider problems involving rich homotheties in a set S of n points in the plane (that is, homotheties that map many points of S to other points of S). By reducing these problems to incidence problems involving points and lines in R^3,…
Given $m$ points and $n$ hyperplanes in $\mathbb{R}^d$, if there are many incidences, we expect to find a big cluster $K_{r,s}$ in their incidence graph. Apfelbaum and Sharir found lower and upper bounds for the largest size of $rs$, which…
We show that the number of unit-area triangles determined by a set $S$ of $n$ points in the plane is $O(n^{20/9})$, improving the earlier bound $O(n^{9/4})$ of Apfelbaum and Sharir [Discrete Comput. Geom., 2010]. We also consider two…
Let P be a set of points and $L$ a set of lines in (F_p)^2, with |P|,|L|\leq N and N<p. We show that P and L generate no more than C N^(3/2 - 1/806 + o(1)) incidences for some absolute constant C. This improves by an order of magnitude on…