Related papers: Several special cases of a square problem

Let a,b,c,d be nonzero rational numbers whose product is a square, and let V be the diagonal quartic surface in PP^3 defined by ax^4+by^4+cz^4+dw^4=0. We prove that if V contains a rational point that does not lie on any of the 48 lines on…

In this paper we present a variety of statements that are in the spirit of the famous theorem of Pascal, often referred to as the Mystic Hexagon. We give explicit equations describing the conditions for $d+4$ points to lie on rational…

We study three covering problems in the plane. Our original motivation for these problems come from trajectory analysis. The first is to decide whether a given set of line segments can be covered by up to four unit-sized, axis-parallel…

Let $F(x_1,...,x_n)$ be a form of degree $d\geq 2$, which produces a geometrically irreducible hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^{n-1}$. This paper is concerned with the number of rational points on F=0 which have height at most $B$. Whenever…

A problem that is simple to state in the context of spherical geometry, and that seems rather interesting, appears to have been unexamined to date in the mathematical literature. The problem can also be recast as a problem in the real…

In 1946 Erd\H os asked for the maximum number of unit distances, $u(n)$, among $n$ points in the plane. He showed that $u(n)> n^{1+c/\log\log n}$ and conjectured that this was the true magnitude. The best known upper bound is…

This paper is concerned with the problem of finding $n$ distinct squares such that, on excluding any one of them, the sum of the remaining $n-1$ squares is a square. While parametric solutions are known when $n=3$ and $n=4$, when $n > 4$,…

The main result of this note is that there are at most seven rational points (including the one at infinity) on the curve C_A with the affine equation y^2 = x^5 + A (where A is a tenth power free integer) when the Mordell-Weil rank of the…

We study $N$-point rational distance sets ($\textrm{RDS}(N)$) on the parabola $y=x^2$. Previous approaches to the problem include efforts made using elliptic curves and diophantine chains, with successful analysis for $N\leq 4$. We extend…

Given a projective intersection of two quadrics X in at least 9 variables, the quantitative behaviour of the rational points on X is investigated under the assumption that X contains a pair of conjugate singular points defined over the…

The square peg problem asks whether every continuous curve in the plane that starts and ends at the same point without self-intersecting contains four distinct corners of some square. Toeplitz conjectured in 1911 that this is indeed the…

Let $X$ be an algebraic variety, defined over the rationals. This paper gives upper bounds for the number of rational points on $X$, with height at most $B$, for the case in which $X$ is a curve or a surface. In the latter case one excludes…

Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a plane singular curve defined over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. The linear system of plane curves of a given degree passing through the singularities of $\cF$ provides potentially good bounds for the number of points…

We study the problem of perfect tiling in the plane and exploring the possibility of tiling a rectangle using integral distinct squares. Assume a set of distinguishable squares (or equivalently a set of distinct natural numbers) is given,…

The main goal of this paper is to address the following problem: given a positive integer $n$, find the largest value $S(n)$ such that a square of edge length $S(n)$ in the Euclidean plane can be covered by $n$ unit squares. We investigate…

Let $n>m>k$ be positive integers and let $a,b,c$ be nonzero rational numbers. We consider the reducibility of some special quadrinomials $x^n+ax^m+bx^k+c$ with $n=4$ and 5, which related to the study of rational points on certain elliptic…

We describe a new non-constructive technique to show that squares are avoidable by an infinite word even if we force some letters from the alphabet to appear at certain occurrences. We show that as long as forced positions are at distance…

In this paper, we prove two theorems concerning the sums of squared distances between points on a unit $n$-sphere that generalize two facts previously known about the case where the points are the vertices of a regular polygon. The first…

It is a classical result that there are $12$ (irreducible) rational cubic curves through $8$ generic points in $\mathbb{P}_{\mathbb{C}}^2$, but little is known about the non-generic cases. The space of $8$-point configurations is…

We give uniform upper bounds for the number of rational points of height at most $B$ on non-singular complete intersections of two quadrics in $\mathbb{P}^3$ defined over $\mathbb{Q}$. To do this, we combine determinant methods with descent…