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Related papers: Erd\H{o}s's unit distance problem and rigidity

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We show that the number of unit distances determined by n points in R^3 is O(n^{3/2}), slightly improving the bound of Clarkson et al. established in 1990. The new proof uses the recently introduced polynomial partitioning technique of Guth…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-07-07 Haim Kaplan , Jiri Matousek , Zuzana Safernova , Micha Sharir

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

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

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

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

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

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

As a variant of the celebrated Szemer\'edi--Trotter theorem, Guth and Katz proved that $m$ points and $n$ lines in $\mathbb{R}^3$ with at most $\sqrt{n}$ lines in a common plane must determine at most $O(m^{1/2}n^{3/4})$ incidences for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-08-30 Andrew Suk , Ji Zeng

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

In 1946, Erd\H{o}s posed the distinct distance problem, which seeks to find the minimum number of distinct distances between pairs of points selected from any configuration of $n$ points in the plane. The problem has since been explored…

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…

The Szemer\'edi-Trotter theorem gives a bound on the maximum number of incidences between points and lines on the Euclidean plane. In particular it says that $n$ lines and $n$ points determine $O(n^{4/3})$ incidences. Let us suppose that an…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Jozsef Solymosi

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 survey the variants of Erd\H{o}s' distinct distances problem and the current best bounds for each of those.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-07-03 Adam Sheffer

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

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

This paper considers an extremal version of the Erd\H{o}s distinct distances problem. For a point set $P \subset \mathbb R^d$, let $\Delta(P)$ denote the set of all Euclidean distances determined by $P$. Our main result is the following: if…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2023-11-28 Oliver Roche-Newton , Dmitrii Zhelezov

The study of extremal problems on triangle areas was initiated in a series of papers by Erd\H{o}s and Purdy in the early 1970s. In this paper we present new results on such problems, concerning the number of triangles of the same area that…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-12-17 Adrian Dumitrescu , Micha Sharir , Csaba D. Toth

A famous conjecture of Erd\H{o}s asserts that for $k\ge 3$, the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $k$-uniform hypergraph without $s+1$ pairwise disjoint edges is $\max\{\binom{n}{k}-\binom{n-s}{k},\binom{sk+k-1}{k}\}$. This problem…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-24 Peter Frankl , Hongliang Lu , Jie Ma , Yuze Wu

A widely investigated subject in combinatorial geometry, originated from Erd\H{o}s, is the following. Given a point set $P$ of cardinality $n$ in the plane, how can we describe the distribution of the determined distances? This has been…