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A graph is called a $k$-planar unit distance graph if it can be drawn in the plane such that every edge is a unit line segment and is involved in at most $k$ crossings. We investigate $u_k(n)$, the maximum number of edges of such graphs on…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-23 Panna Gehér , Dömötör Pálvölgyi , Dániel G. Simon , Géza Tóth

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

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…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2017-06-08 Sariel Har-Peled , Mitchell Jones

A matchstick graph is a plane graph with edges drawn as unit distance line segments. This class of graphs was introduced by Harborth who conjectured that a matchstick graph on $n$ vertices can have at most $\lfloor 3n - \sqrt{12n -…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-06-04 Panna Gehér , Géza Tóth

We show that there are sets of $n$ points in the plane with $n$ arbitrarily large that contain more than $n^{1.014}$ pairs of points separated by a distance exactly $1$. This improves on very recent work of a team at OpenAI, who proved the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-21 Will Sawin

Let $T(n)$ denote the maximum number of unit distances that a set of $n$ points in the Euclidean plane $\mathbb{R}^2$ can determine with the additional condition that the distinct unit length directions determined by the configuration must…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2014-06-26 Mark Herman , Jonathan Pakianathan

We show that any set of $n$ points in general position in the plane determines $n^{1-o(1)}$ pairwise crossing segments. The best previously known lower bound, $\Omega\left(\sqrt n\right)$, was proved more than 25 years ago by Aronov, Erd\H…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-05-02 János Pach , Natan Rubin , Gábor Tardos

We prove that if $P$ is a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{C}^2$, then either the points in $P$ determine $\Omega(n^{1-\epsilon})$ complex distances, or $P$ is contained in a line with slope $\pm i$. If the latter occurs then each pair of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-08-24 Adam Sheffer , Joshua Zahl

Let $d_1\leq d_2\leq\ldots\leq d_{n\choose 2}$ denote the distances determined by $n$ points in the plane. It is shown that $\min\sum_i (d_{i+1}-d_i)^2=O(n^{-6/7})$, where the minimum is taken over all point sets with minimal distance $d_1…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2008-02-03 János Pach , Joel Spencer

For $d\geq 2$ and any norm on $\mathbb R^d$, we prove that there exists a set of $n$ points that spans at least $(\tfrac d2-o(1))n\log_2n$ unit distances under this norm for every $n$. This matches the upper bound recently proved by Alon,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-03 Josef Greilhuber , Carl Schildkraut , Jonathan Tidor

We show that the number of unit-area triangles determined by a set of $n$ points in the plane is $O(n^{9/4+\epsilon})$, for any $\epsilon>0$, improving the recent bound $O(n^{44/19})$ of Dumitrescu et al.

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2010-01-27 Roel Apfelbaum , Micha Sharir

Given sets $\mathcal{P}, \mathcal{Q} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^2$ of sizes $m$ and $n$ respectively, we are interested in the number of distinct distances spanned by $\mathcal{P} \times \mathcal{Q}$. Let $D(m, n)$ denote the minimum number of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-12-05 Surya Mathialagan

We study a family of variants of Erd\H os' unit distance problem, concerning distances and dot products between pairs of points chosen from a large finite point set. Specifically, given a large finite set of $n$ points $E$, we look for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-12-01 Slade Gunter , Eyvi Palsson , Ben Rhodes , Steven Senger

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-04-22 Ryan Schwartz , József Solymosi , Frank de Zeeuw

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

Let P_1 and P_2 be two sets of points in the plane, so that P_1 is contained in a line L_1, P_2 is contained in a line L_2, and L_1 and L_2 are neither parallel nor orthogonal. Then the number of distinct distances determined by the pairs…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-06-04 Micha Sharir , Adam Sheffer , József Solymosi

In 1997, Erd\H{o}s asked whether for arbitrarily large $n$ there exists a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^2$ that determines $O(\frac{n}{\sqrt{\log n}})$ distinct distances while satisfying the local constraint that every 4-point subset…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-01-21 Benjamin Grayzel

By improving upon previous estimates on a problem posed by L. Moser, we prove a conjecture of Erd\H{o}s that the density of any measurable planar set avoiding unit distances cannot exceed $1/4$. Our argument implies the upper bound of…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2024-06-25 Gergely Ambrus , Adrián Csiszárik , Máté Matolcsi , Dániel Varga , Pál Zsámboki

We deal with the asymptotic enumeration of combinatorial structures on planar maps. Prominent instances of such problems are the enumeration of spanning trees, bipartite perfect matchings, and ice models. The notion of orientations with…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-09-06 S. Felsner , F. Zickfeld

Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, we consider the problem of computing the number of points of $P$ in a query unit disk (i.e., all query disks have the same radius). We show that the main techniques for simplex range searching in…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2022-04-20 Haitao Wang