Related papers: Erd\H{o}s's unit distance problem and rigidity
Erdos, Herzog and Piranian asked whether, for $n$ points in the plane with fixed diameter (maximum distance between points), an arrangement of a regular $n$-gon maximizes their product of all pairs of distances. Recently, it was discovered…
A famous theorem of Kirkman says that there exists a Steiner triple system of order $n$ if and only if $n\equiv 1,3\mod{6}$. In 1973, Erd\H{o}s conjectured that one can find so-called `sparse' Steiner triple systems. Roughly speaking, the…
We study a generalization of Erd\H os's unit distances problem to chains of $k$ distances. Given $\mathcal P,$ a set of $n$ points, and a sequence of distances $(\delta_1,\ldots,\delta_k)$, we study the maximum possible number of tuples of…
We give a fairly elementary and simple proof that shows that the number of incidences between $m$ points and $n$ lines in ${\mathbb R}^3$, so that no plane contains more than $s$ lines, is $$ O\left(m^{1/2}n^{3/4}+ m^{2/3}n^{1/3}s^{1/3} + m…
We study a variant of the Erd\H os unit distance problem, concerning angles between successive triples of points chosen from a large finite point set. Specifically, given a large finite set of $n$ points $E$, and a sequence of angles…
We extend (and somewhat simplify) the algebraic proof technique of Guth and Katz \cite{GK}, to obtain several sharp bounds on the number of incidences between lines and points in three dimensions. Specifically, we show: (i) The maximum…
We study a variant of Erd\H os' unit distance problem, concerning dot products between successive pairs of points chosen from a large finite point set. Specifically, given a large finite set of $n$ points $E$, and a sequence of nonzero dot…
A classical result by Erd\H{o}s, and later on by Bondy and Simonivits, states that every $n$-vertex graph with no cycle of length $2k$ has at most $O(n^{1+1 /k})$ edges. This bound is known to be tight when $k \in \{2,3,5\},$ but it is a…
Given a set $X\subseteq\mathbb{R}^2$ of $n$ points and a distance $d>0$, the multiplicity of $d$ is the number of times the distance $d$ appears between points in $X$. Let $a_1(X) \geq a_2(X) \geq \cdots \geq a_m(X)$ denote the…
We show that for $m$ points and $n$ lines in the real plane, the number of distinct distances between the points and the lines is $\Omega(m^{1/5}n^{3/5})$, as long as $m^{1/2}\le n\le m^2$. We also prove that for any $m$ points in the…
By definition, a rigid graph in $\mathbb{R}^d$ (or on a sphere) has a finite number of embeddings up to rigid motions for a given set of edge length constraints. These embeddings are related to the real solutions of an algebraic system.…
For a finite point set $E\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ and a connected graph $G$ on $k+1$ vertices, we define a $G$-framework to be a collection of $k + 1$ points in E such that the distance between a pair of points is specified if the…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points and a set $S$ of $n$ segments in the plane, we consider the problem of computing for each segment of $S$ its closest point in $P$. The previously best algorithm solves the problem in $n^{4/3}2^{O(\log^*n)}$…
The symmetric case of the Szemer\'edi-Trotter theorem says that any configuration of $N$ lines and $N$ points in the plane has at most $O(N^{4/3})$ incidences. We describe a recipe involving just $O(N^{1/3})$ parameters which sometimes…
We obtain some new upper bounds on the maximum number $f(n)$ of edges in $n$-vertex graphs without containing cycles of length four. This leads to an asymptotically optimal bound on $f(n)$ for a broad range of integers $n$ as well as a…
Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space. Assign to each $x\in S$ an arbitrary distance $r(x)>0$. Let $e_r(x,S)$ denote the number of points in $S$ at distance $r(x)$ from $x$. Avis, Erd\"os and Pach (1988)…
According to a conjecture of Pach, there are $O(n)$ tangent pairs among any family of $n$ Jordan arcs in which every pair of arcs has precisely one common point and no three arcs share a common point. This conjecture was proved for two…
We show that for any large $n$, there exists a set of $n$ points in the plane with $O(n^2/\sqrt{\log n})$ distinct distances, such that any four points in the set determine at least five distinct distances. This answers (in the negative) a…
We develop a new approach to address some classical questions concerning the size and structure of integer distance sets. Our main result is that any integer distance set in the Euclidean plane is either very sparse or has all but an…
In this paper, we propose new techniques for solving geometric optimization problems involving interpoint distances of a point set in the plane. Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane and an integer $1 \leq k \leq \binom{n}{2}$, the…