Related papers: A finite version of the Kakeya problem

A $(k,m)$-Furstenberg set $S \subset \mathbb{F}_q^n$ over a finite field is a set that has at least $m$ points in common with a $k$-flat in every direction. The question of determining the smallest size of such sets is a natural…

Prompted by results of Guardo, Van Tuyl and the second author for lines in projective 3 space, we develop asymptotic upper bounds for the least degree of a homogeneous form vanishing to order at least m on a union of disjoint r dimensional…

Various effective field theories in four dimensions are shown to have exact non-trivial solutions in the limit as the number $N$ of fields of some type becomes large. These include extended versions of the U(N) Gross-Neveu model, the…

Let $S = K[x_1, ..., x_n ]$ be a polynomial ring over a field $K$, and $E = K < y_1, ..., y_n >$ an exterior algebra. The "linearity defect" $ld_E(N)$ of a finitely generated graded $E$-module $N$ measures how far $N$ departs from…

We consider the minimal number of points on a regular grid on the plane that generates $n$ line segments of points of exactly length $k$. We illustrate how this is related to the $n$-queens problem on the toroidal chessboard and show that…

Let C be an algebraic curve defined over a number field K, of positive genus and without K-rational points. We conjecture that there exists some extension field L over which C violates the Hasse principle, i.e., has points everywhere…

Let P be a set of n points in the plane, not all on a line. We show that if n is large then there are at least n/2 ordinary lines, that is to say lines passing through exactly two points of P. This confirms, for large n, a conjecture of…

We formulate the conditional Kolmogorov complexity of x given y at precision r, where x and y are points in Euclidean spaces and r is a natural number. We demonstrate the utility of this notion in two ways. 1. We prove a point-to-set…

The classical No-Three-In-Line problem seeks the maximum number of points that may be selected from an $n\times n$ grid while avoiding a collinear triple. The maximum is well known to be linear in $n$. Following a question of Erde, we seek…

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…

According to the Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres theorem, for every $n$, a sufficiently large set of points in general position in the plane contains $n$ in convex position. In this note we investigate the line version of this result, that is, we want…

Let G be a linear algebraic group defined over a field k. We prove that, under mild assumptions on k and G, there exists a finite k-subgroup S of G such that the natural map H^1(K, S) -> H^1(K, G) is surjective for every field extension…

Motivated by classical work of Alon and F\"uredi, we introduce and address the following problem: determine the minimum number of affine hyperplanes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ needed to cover every point of the triangular grid $T_d(n) :=…

Let $\mathscr{A}$ be a finite set of closed rational points in projective space, let $\mathscr{I}$ be the vanishing ideal of $\mathscr{A}$, and let $\mathscr{D}(\mathscr{A})$ be the set of exponents of those monomials which do not occur as…

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…

Based on a result of Makeev, in 2012 Blagojevi\'c and Karasev proposed the following problem: given any positive integers $m$ and $1\leq \ell\leq k$, find the minimum dimension $d=\Delta(m;\ell/k)$ such that for any $m$ mass distributions…

A (d,k) set is a subset of R^d containing a translate of every k-dimensional plane. Bourgain showed that for 2^{k-1}+k \geq d, every (d,k) set has positive Lebesgue measure. We give an L^p bound for the corresponding maximal operator.

A Kakeya set is a compact subset of $\mathbb{R}^n$ that contains a unit line segment pointing in every direction. The Kakeya conjecture asserts that such sets must have Hausdorff and Minkowski dimension $n$. There is a special class of…

Around the early 2000-s, Bourgain, Katz and Tao introduced an arithmetic approach to study Kakeya-type problems. They showed that the Euclidean Kakeya conjecture follows from a natural problem in additive combinatorics, now referred to as…

We prove that all bounded subsets of $\mathbb{Q}_p^n$ containing a line segment of unit length in every direction have Hausdorff and Minkowski dimension $n$. This is the analogue of the classical Kakeya conjecture with $\mathbb{R}$ replaced…