Related papers: Several special cases of a square problem

Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, its separability is the minimum number of lines needed to separate all its pairs of points from each other. We show that the minimum number of lines needed to separate $n$ points, picked randomly…

We generalize the Khinchin singularity phenomenon for the problem when, for a given irrational linear subspace, we are looking for rational subspaces that form the smallest angle with the given

Theorem. An irreducible cubic polynomial with rational coefficients has a root in a one step radical extension of Q if and only if the discriminate is a square of a rational number. Theorem. An irreducible polynomial x^4+px^2+qx+s with…

We consider the question whether a real threefold X fibred into quadric surfaces over the real projective line is stably rational (over R) if the topological space X(R) is connected. We give a counterexample. When all geometric fibres are…

We show that a very general hypersurface of degree d at least 4 and dimension at most $(d+1)2^{d-4}$ over a field of characteristic different from 2 does not admit a decomposition of the diagonal; hence, it is neither stably nor retract…

A rational triangle is a triangle with rational side lengths. We consider three different families of rational triangles having a fixed side and whose vertices are rational points in the plane. We display a one-to-one correspondence between…

Let $q$ be a perfect power of a prime number $p$ and $E({\mathbb F}_q)$ be an elliptic curve over ${\mathbb F}_q$ given by the equation $y^2=x^3+Ax+B$. For a positive integer $n$ we denote by $ \# E({\mathbb F}_{q^n})$ the number of…

We study the geometry of spaces of planes on smooth complete intersections of three quadrics, with a view toward rationality questions.

Let $X\subseteq \mathbb{P}^3$ be a smooth projective surface of degree $d\ge 4$ defined over a number field $K$, and let $N_{X^{\prime}}(B)$ be the number of rational points of $X$ of height at most $B$ that do not lie on lines contained in…

We suggest a new type of problem about distances in graphs and make several conjectures. As a first step towards proving them, we show that for sufficiently large values of n and k, a graph on n vertices that has no three vertices at…

A rational distance set in the plane is a point set which has the property that all pairwise distances between its points are rational. Erd\H os and Ulam conjectured in 1945 that there is no dense rational distance set in the plane. In this…

Let $R$ be the field of real Puiseux series. It is a real closed field. We construct the first examples of smooth intersections of two quadrics in $\mathbb{P}_R^5$ and smooth cubic hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{P}_R^4$ which are not stably…

Let $\mathcal{S}$ be a finite set of integer points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, which we assume has many symmetries, and let $P\in\mathbb{R}^d$ be a fixed point. We calculate the distances from $P$ to the points in $\mathcal{S}$ and compare the…

A quadrilateral is said to be rational if its four sides, the two diagonals and the area are all expressible by rational numbers. The problem of constructing rational quadrilaterals dates back to the seventh century when Brahmagupta gave an…

Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in the real plane contained in an algebraic curve $C$ of degree $d$. We prove that the number of distinct distances determined by $P$ is at least $c_d n^{4/3}$, unless $C$ contains a line or a circle. We also…

In a previous paper with the same title, we gave an upper bound for the exponent of uniform rational approximation to a quadruple of $\mathbb{Q}$-linearly independent real numbers in geometric progression. Here, we explain why this upper…

A triangle with rational sides and rational area is called a rational triangle. In this paper we consider three problems of finding pairs of rational triangles which have a common circumradius as well as either a common perimeter or a…

It is proved that for any mapping of a unit segment to a unit square, there is a pair of points of the segment for which the square of the Euclidean distance between their images exceeds the distance between them on the segment by at least…

We classify rational, irreducible quartic symmetroids in projective 3-space. They are either singular along a line or a smooth conic section, or they have a triple point or a tacnode.

A spherical quadrilateral is a bordered surface homeomorphic to a closed disk, with four distinguished boundary points called corners, equipped with a Riemannian metric of constant curvature 1, except at the corners, and such that the…