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Related papers: On the unit distance problem

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We prove that the number of unit distances among $n$ planar points is at most $1.94\cdot n^{4/3}$, improving on the previous best bound of $8n^{4/3}$. We also give better upper and lower bounds for several small values of $n$. We also prove…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-12-16 Péter Ágoston , Dömötör Pálvölgyi

A homogeneous set of $n$ points in the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space determines at least $\Omega(n^{2d/(d^2+1)} / \log^{c(d)} n)$ distinct distances for a constant $c(d)>0$. In three-space, we slightly improve our general bound and show…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-12-17 J. Solymosi , Cs. D. Toth

We study a variant of the Erd\H os unit distance problem, concerning angles between successive triples of points chosen from a large finite point set. Specifically, given a large finite set of $n$ points $E$, and a sequence of angles…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-04-21 Eyvindur Ari Palsson , Steven Senger , Charles Wolf

We study a generalization of Erd\H os's unit distances problem to chains of $k$ distances. Given $\mathcal P,$ a set of $n$ points, and a sequence of distances $(\delta_1,\ldots,\delta_k)$, we study the maximum possible number of tuples of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-02-25 Eyvindur Ari Palsson , Steven Senger , Adam Sheffer

The following generalisation of the Erd\H{o}s unit distance problem was recently suggested by Palsson, Senger and Sheffer. Given $k$ positive real numbers $\delta_1,\dots,\delta_k$, a $(k+1)$-tuple $(p_1,\dots,p_{k+1})$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-10-19 Nora Frankl , Andrey Kupavskii

In this paper we obtain a new lower bound on the Erd\H{o}s distinct distances problem in the plane over prime fields. More precisely, we show that for any set $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p^2$ with $|A|\le p^{7/6}$, the number of distinct distances…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-26 Alex Iosevich , Doowon Koh , Thang Pham , Chun-Yen Shen , Le Anh Vinh

We show that the maximum number of unit distances or of diameters in a set of n points in d-dimensional Euclidean space is attained only by specific types of Lenz constructions, for all d >= 4 and n sufficiently large, depending on d. As a…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2009-03-12 Konrad J Swanepoel

In this note, we show that in planar pointsets determining many unit distances, these unit distances must span many directions. Specifically, we show that a set of $n$ points can determine only $o(n^{4/3})$ unit distances from a set of at…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-04-08 Gabriel Currier , József Solymosi

In this paper we investigate the Erd\"os/Falconer distance conjecture for a natural class of sets statistically, though not necessarily arithmetically, similar to a lattice. We prove a good upper bound for spherical means that have been…

Classical Analysis and ODEs · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Alex Iosevich , Misha Rudnev

Erd\H{o}s and Fishburn studied the maximum number of points in the plane that span $k$ distances and classified these configurations, as an inverse problem of the Erd\H{o}s distinct distances problem. We consider the analogous problem for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-05-14 Eyvindur A. Palsson , Edward Yu

The well-known three distance theorem states that there are at most three distinct gaps between consecutive elements in the set of the first n multiples of any real number. We generalise this theorem to higher dimensions under a suitable…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Sujith Vijay

This is an incomplete attempt to show that the upper bound of $\lesssim n^\frac{4}{3}$ on the number unit distances determined by a large finite set of $n$ points in the plane is not sharp. The methods also say something about sets of $n$…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2026-05-27 Steven Senger

Let $\{p_1, \ldots , p_n \} \subset {\Bbb{R}}^2$ be a separated point set, i.e., any two points have a distance at least $1$. Let $k \ge 1$ be an integer, and $1 \le t_1 < \ldots < t_k$ be real numbers. Let $\delta > 0$. Suppose for all $1…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-08 P. Erdős , E. Makai, , J. Pach

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}…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-04-07 Micha Sharir , Noam Solomon

The famous Erd\H{o}s distinct distances problem asks the following: how many distinct distances must exist between a set of $n$ points in the plane? There are many generalisations of this question that ask one to consider different spaces…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-05-13 Sean Dewar , Nora Frankl , Samuel Mansfield , Anthony Nixon , Jonathan Passant , Audie Warren

We first describe a reduction from the problem of lower-bounding the number of distinct distances determined by a set $S$ of $s$ points in the plane to an incidence problem between points and a certain class of helices (or parabolas) in…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2010-05-07 György Elekes , Micha Sharir

We study Erd\H os's distinct distances problem under $\ell_p$ metrics with integer $p$. We improve the current best bound for this problem from $\Omega(n^{4/5})$ to $\Omega(n^{6/7-\epsilon})$, for any $\epsilon>0$. We also characterize the…

We show that for $m$ points and $n$ lines in the real plane, the number of distinct distances between the points and the lines is $\Omega(m^{1/5}n^{3/5})$, as long as $m^{1/2}\le n\le m^2$. We also prove that for any $m$ points in the…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2015-12-31 Micha Sharir , Shakhar Smorodinsky , Claudiu Valculescu , Frank de Zeeuw

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…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2022-03-02 Joshua Zahl

The Erd\H{o}s distinct distance problem is a ubiquitous problem in discrete geometry. Somewhat 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…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Henry L. Fleischmann , Sergei V. Konyagin , Steven J. Miller , Eyvindur A. Palsson , Ethan Pesikoff , Charles Wolf