Related papers: What Grassmann Knew: Incidence Theorems on Cubics
We develop a heuristic for the density of integer points on affine cubic surfaces. Our heuristic applies to smooth surfaces defined by cubic polynomials that are log K3, but it can also be adjusted to handle singular cubic surfaces. We…
Let C be a smooth cubic curve in the complex projective plane. We show that for every positive integer k, there are only finite number of rational curves of degree k each intersects the cubic C at exactly one point. The number of such…
Given independent normally distributed points A,B,C,D in Euclidean 3-space, let Q denote the plane determined by A,B,C and D^ denote the orthogonal projection of D onto Q. The probability that the tetrahedron ABCD is acute remains…
Guth and Katz proved that, as conjectured by Elekes and Sharir, $m$ lines in 3-space have at most constant times $ m^{3/2}$ intersection points, aside from some obvious counter examples. We give an explicit bound for the constant, using the…
In this paper we consider the problem of approximating Euclidean distances by the infinite integer grid graph. Although the topology of the graph is fixed, we have control over the edge-weight assignment $w:E\to \mathbb{R}_{\ge 0}$, and…
We present a collection of research questions on cubic surfaces in 3-space. These questions inspired a collection of papers to be published in a special issue of the journal Le Matematiche. This article serves as the introduction to that…
Graph partitioning, or the dividing of a graph into two or more parts based on certain conditions, arises naturally throughout discrete mathematics, and problems of this kind have been studied extensively. In the 1990s, Ando conjectured…
We study the probability for a random line to intersect a given plane curve, defined over a finite field, in a given number of points defined over the same field. In particular, we focus on the limits of these probabilities under successive…
This paper, motivated by problems in Diophantine analysis which can be formulated as problems of finding rational points on the intersection of two quadrics, presents an explicit construction of a rationally defined isomorphism (biregular…
We use twisted stable maps to compute the number of rational degree d plane curves having prescribed contacts to a smooth plane cubic.
Interpreting tangency as a limit of two transverse intersections, we obtain a concrete formula to enumerate smooth degree $d$ plane curves tangent to a given line at multiple points with arbitrary order of tangency. Extending that idea, we…
Lichtenbaum proved that index and period coincide for a curve of genus one over a $p$-adic field. Salberger proved that the Hasse principle holds for a smooth complete intersection of two quadrics $X \subset P^n$ over a number field, if it…
In this paper we study geometric coincidence problems in the spirit of the following problems by B. Gr\"unbaum: How many affine diameters of a convex body in $\mathbb R^n$ must have a common point? How many centers (in some sense) of…
We study the problem of embedding graphs in the plane as good geometric spanners. That is, for a graph $G$, the goal is to construct a straight-line drawing $\Gamma$ of $G$ in the plane such that, for any two vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$,…
Let $P$ be a set of points and $L$ a set of lines in the (extended) Euclidean plane, and $I \subseteq P\times L$, where $i =(p,l) \in I$ means that point $p$ and line $l$ are incident. The incidences can be interpreted as quadratic…
A famous configuration of 27 lines on a non-singular cubic surface in $\mathbb P^3$ contains remarkable subconfigurations, and in particular the ones formed by six pairwise disjoint lines. We study such six-line configurations in the case…
Chasles' Quadrilateral Theorem is a classical statement about four tangents to a conic that simultaneously circumscribe a circle. In its various formulations, it relates the concurrence of certain lines to the existence of confocal conics…
We prove explicit bounds on the number of lattice points on or near a convex curve in terms of geometric invariants such as length, curvature, and affine arclength. In several of our results we obtain the best possible constants. Our…
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…
Given a point set, mostly a grid in our case, we seek upper and lower bounds on the number of curves that are needed to cover the point set. We say a curve covers a point if the curve passes through the point. We consider such coverings by…