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Solving a longstanding problem on equiangular lines, we determine, for each given fixed angle and in all sufficiently large dimensions, the maximum number of lines pairwise separated by the given angle. Fix $0 < \alpha < 1$. Let…
We initiate the study of the following natural geometric optimization problem. The input is a set of axis-aligned rectangles in the plane. The objective is to find a set of horizontal line segments of minimum total length so that every…
Let $L$ be a set of $n$ axis-parallel lines in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We are are interested in partitions of $\mathbb{R}^3$ by a set $H$ of three planes such that each open cell in the arrangement $\mathcal{A}(H)$ is intersected by as few lines…
A family of closed simple (i.e., Jordan) curves is $m$-intersecting if any pair of its curves have at most $m$ points of common intersection. We say that a pair of such curves touch if they intersect at a single point of common tangency. In…
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 consider the following problem about dispersing points. Given a set of points in the plane, the task is to identify whether by moving a small number of points by small distance, we can obtain an arrangement of points such that no pair of…
The canonical ring $S_D = \bigoplus_{d \geq 0} H^0(X, \lfloor dD \rfloor)$ of a divisor D on a curve X is a natural object of study; when D is a Q-divisor, it has connections to projective embeddings of stacky curves and rings of modular…
Motivated by a question of Erd\H{o}s on blocking sets in a projective plane that intersect every line only a few times, several authors have used unions of algebraic curves to construct such sets in $\mathbb{P}^2(\mathbb{F}_q)$. In this…
Suppose we are given a pair of points $s, t$ and a set $S$ of $n$ geometric objects in the plane, called obstacles. We show that in polynomial time one can construct an auxiliary (multi-)graph $G$ with vertex set $S$ and every edge labeled…
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…
We define a geometrically meaningful compactification of the moduli space of smooth plane curves, which can be calculated explicitly. The basic idea is to regard a plane curve D in P^2 as a pair (P^2,D) of a surface together with a divisor,…
Let E/k(T) be an elliptic curve defined over a rational function field of characteristic zero. Fix a Weierstrass equation for E. For points R in E(k(T)), write x_R=A_R/D_R^2 with relatively prime polynomials A_R(T) and D_R(T) in k[T]. The…
In a recent paper arXiv:1602.02300v2, Cook II, Harbourne, Migliore and Nagel related the splitting type of a line arrangement in the projective plane to the number of conditions imposed by a general fat point of multiplicity $j$ to the…
Planar point sets with many triple lines (which contain at least three distinct points of the set) have been studied for 180 years, started with Jackson and followed by Sylvester. Green and Tao has shown recently that the maximum possible…
A plane curve $C\subset\mathbb{P}^2$ of degree $d$ is called \emph{blocking} if every $\mathbb{F}_q$-line in the plane meets $C$ at some $\mathbb{F}_q$-point. We prove that the proportion of blocking curves among those of degree $d$ is…
We give a simple proof of the well-known divisibility by 2 condition for rational points on elliptic curves with rational 2-torsion. As an application of the explicit division by $2^n$ formulas obtained in Sec.2, we construct versal…
Let K be a field and let L/K be a finite extension. Let X/K be a scheme of finite type. A point of X(L) is said to be new if it does not belong to the union of X(F), when F runs over all proper subextensions of L. Fix now an integer g>0 and…
Clemm and Trebat-Leder (2014) proved that the number of quadratic number fields with absolute discriminant bounded by $x$ over which there exist elliptic curves with good reduction everywhere and rational $j$-invariant is $\gg…
The Erd\H{o}s distance problem concerns the least number of distinct distances that can be determined by $N$ points in the plane. The integer lattice with $N$ points is known as \textit{near-optimal}, as it spans $\Theta(N/\sqrt{\log(N)})$…
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…