art, Iosevich, Koh and Rudnev (2007) show, using Fourier analysis method, that the finite Erdös-Falconer distance conjecture holds for subsets of the unit sphere in $\mathbbm{F}_q^d$. In this note, we give a graph theoretic proof of this result.
There exists an infinite family of examples of subsets of $\mathbb{F}_q^2$ with $q^{4/3}$ elements whose distance sets are not the whole of $\mathbb{F}_q$.
We consider a finite fields version of the Erdős-Falconer distance problem for two different sets. In a certain range for the sizes of the two sets we obtain results of the conjectured order of magnitude.
The recent breakthrough of Guth, Iosevich, Ou, and Wang (2019) on the Falconer distance problem states that for a compact set $A\subset \mathbb{R}^2$, if the Hausdorff dimension of $A$ is greater than $\frac{5}{4}$, then the distance set $Δ(A)$ has positive Lebesgue measure. In a very recent paper, Murphy, Petridis, Pham, Rudnev, and Stevens (2022) proved the prime field version of this result, namely, for $E\subset\mathbb{F}_p^2$ with $|E|\gg p^{5/4}$, there exist many points $x\in E$ such that the number of distinct distances from $x$ is at least $cp$. The main purpose of this paper is to pr…
We prove a point-wise and average bound for the number of incidences between points and hyper-planes in vector spaces over finite fields. While our estimates are, in general, sharp, we observe an improvement for product sets and sets contained in a sphere. We use these incidence bounds to obtain significant improvements on the arithmetic problem of covering ${\mathbb F}_q$, the finite field with q elements, by $A \cdot A+... +A \cdot A$, where A is a subset ${\mathbb F}_q$ of sufficiently large size. We also use the incidence machinery we develope and arithmetic constructions to study the Erdo…
We study the following two-parameter variant of the Erd\H os-Falconer distance problem. Given $E,F \subset {\Bbb F}_q^{k+l}$, $l \geq k \ge 2$, the $k+l$-dimensional vector space over the finite field with $q$ elements, let $B_{k,l}(E,F)$ be given by $$\{(\Vert x'-y'\Vert, \Vert x"-y" \Vert): x=(x',x") \in E, y=(y',y") \in F; x',y' \in {\Bbb F}_q^k, x",y" \in {\Bbb F}_q^l \}.$$ We prove that if $|E||F| \geq C q^{k+2l+1}$, then $B_{k,l}(E,F)={\Bbb F}_q \times {\Bbb F}_q$. Furthermore this result is sharp if $k$ is odd. For the case of $l=k=2$ and $q$ a prime with $q \equiv 3 \mod 4$ we get that…
We obtain nontrivial exponents for Erd\H os-Falconer type problems. Let $T_k(E)$ denote the set of distinct congruent $k$-dimensional simplexes determined by $(k+1)$-tuples of points from $E$. We prove that there exists $s_0(d)<d$ such that, if $E \subset {\Bbb R}^d,\, d \ge 2$, with $dim_{\mathcal H}(E)>s_0(d)$, then the ${k+1 \choose 2}$-dimensional Lebesgue measure of $T_k(E)$ is positive. Results were previously obtained for triangles in the plane \cite{GI12} and in higher dimensions \cite{GGIP12}. In this paper, we improve upon those exponents, using a group-theoretic method that sheds ne…
The Erd\H os-Falconer distance problem in $\mathbb{Z}_q^d$ asks one to show that if $E \subset \mathbb{Z}_q^d$ is of sufficiently large cardinality, then $Δ(E) := \{(x_1 - y_1)^2 + \dots + (x_d - y_d)^2 : x, y \in E\}$ satisfies $Δ(E) = \mathbb{Z}_q$. Here, $\mathbb{Z}_q$ is the set of integers modulo $q$, and $\mathbb{Z}_q^d$ is the free module of rank $d$ over $\mathbb{Z}_q$. We extend known results in two directions. Previous results were known only in the setting $q = p^{\ell}$, where $p$ is an odd prime, and as such only showed that all units were obtained in the distance set. We remove t…
Given $E \subseteq \mathbb{F}_q^d \times \mathbb{F}_q^d$, with the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ of order $q$ and the integer $d \ge 2$, we define the two-parameter distance set as $Δ_{d, d}(E)=\left\{\left(\|x_1-y_1\|, \|x_2-y_2\|\right) : (x_1,x_2), (y_1,y_2) \in E \right\}$. Birklbauer and Iosevich (2017) proved that if $|E| \gg q^{\frac{3d+1}{2}}$, then $ |Δ_{d, d}(E)| = q^2$. For the case of $d=2$, they showed that if $|E| \gg q^{\frac{10}{3}}$, then $ |Δ_{2, 2}(E)| \gg q^2$. In this paper, we present extensions and improvements of these results.
The first purpose of this paper is to provide new finite field extension theorems for paraboloids and spheres. By using the unusual good Fourier transform of the zero sphere in some specific dimensions, which has been discovered recently in the work of Iosevich, Lee, Shen, and the first and second listed authors (2018), we provide a new $L^2\to L^r$ extension estimate for paraboloids in dimensions $d=4k+3$ and $q\equiv 3\mod 4$, which improves significantly the recent exponent obtained by the first listed author. In the case of spheres, we introduce a way of using \textit{the first association…
In this paper we investigate three unsolved conjectures in geometric combinatorics, namely Falconer's distance set conjecture, the dimension of Furstenburg sets, and Erdos's ring conjecture. We formulate natural $δ$-discretized versions of these conjectures and show that in a certain sense that these discretized versions are equivalent. In particular, it appears that to progress on any of these problems one must prove a quantitative statement about the existence of sub-rings of $R$ of dimension 1/2.
A celebrated result due to Wolff says if $E$ is a compact subset of ${\Bbb R}^2$, then the Lebesgue measure of the distance set $Δ(E)=\{|x-y|: x,y \in E \}$ is positive if the Hausdorff dimension of $E$ is greater than $\frac{4}{3}$. In this paper we improve the $\frac{4}{3}$ barrier by a small exponent for Cartesian products. In higher dimensions, also in the context of Cartesian products, we reduce Erdogan's $\frac{d}{2}+\frac{1}{3}$ exponent to $\frac{d^2}{2d-1}$. The proof uses a combination of Fourier analysis and additive comibinatorics.
We study multilinear generalized Radon transforms using a graph-theoretic paradigm that includes the widely studied linear case. These provide a general mechanism to study Falconer-type problems involving $(k+1)$-point configurations in geometric measure theory, with $k \ge 2$, including the distribution of simplices, volumes and angles determined by the points of fractal subsets $E \subset {\Bbb R}^d$, $d \ge 2$. If $T_k(E)$ denotes the set of noncongruent $(k+1)$-point configurations determined by $E$, we show that if the Hausdorff dimension of $E$ is greater than $d-\frac{d-1}{2k}$, then th…
We study the Erd\H os-Falconer distance problem for a set $A\subset \mathbb{F}^2$, where $\mathbb{F}$ is a field of positive characteristic $p$. If $\mathbb{F}=\mathbb{F}_p$ and the cardinality $|A|$ exceeds $p^{5/4}$, we prove that $A$ determines an asymptotically full proportion of the feasible $p$ distances. For small sets $A$, namely when $|A|\leq p^{4/3}$ over any $\mathbb{F}$, we prove that either $A$ determines $\gg|A|^{2/3}$. For both large and small sets, the results proved are in fact for pinned distances.
Here we examine some Erdos-Falconer-type problems in vector spaces over finite fields involving right angles. Our main goals are to show that a) a subset A of F_q^d of size >> q^[(d+2)/3] contains three points which generate a right angle, and b) a subset A of F_q^d of size >> q^[(d+2)/2] contains two points which generate a right angle with the vertex at the origin. We will also prove that b) is sharp up to constants and provide some partial results for similar problems related to spread and collinear triples.
In this paper we investigate the Erdös/Falconer distance conjecture for a natural class of sets statistically, though not necessarily arithmetically, similar to a lattice. We prove a good upper bound for spherical means that have been classically used to study this problem. We conjecture that a majorant for the spherical means suffices to prove the distance conjecture(s) in this setting. For a class of non-Euclidean distances, we show that this generally cannot be achieved, at least in dimension two, by considering integer point distributions on convex curves and surfaces. In higher dimensions…
Circle geometries are incidence structures that capture the geometry of circles on spheres, cones and hyperboloids in 3-dimensional space. In a previous paper, the author characterised the largest intersecting families in finite ovoidal circle geometries, except for Möbius planes of odd order. In this paper we show that also in these Möbius planes, if the order is greater than 3, the largest intersecting families are the sets of circles through a fixed point. We show the same result in the only known family of finite non-ovoidal circle geometries. Using the same techniques, we show a stability…
In this paper, we study the Erdős-Falconer distance problem in five dimensions for sets of Cartesian product structures. More precisely, we show that for $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p$ with $|A|\gg p^{\frac{13}{22}}$, then $Δ(A^5)=\mathbb{F}_p$. When $|A-A|\sim |A|$, we obtain stronger statements as follows: If $|A|\gg p^{\frac{13}{22}}$, then $(A-A)^2+A^2+A^2+A^2+A^2=\mathbb{F}_p.$ If $|A|\gg p^{\frac{4}{7}}$, then $(A-A)^2+(A-A)^2+A^2+A^2+A^2+A^2=\mathbb{F}_p.$ We also prove that if $p^{4/7}\ll |A-A|=K|A|\le p^{5/8}$, then \[|A^2+A^2|\gg \min \left\lbrace \frac{p}{K^4}, \frac{|A|^{8/3}}{K^{7/3}p^{2…
We study the $k$-resultant modulus set problem in the $d$-dimensional vector space $\mathbb F_q^d$ over the finite field $\mathbb F_q$ with $q$ elements. Given $E\subset \mathbb F_q^d$ and an integer $k\ge 2$, the $k$-resultant modulus set, denoted by $Δ_k(E)$, is defined as $$ Δ_k(E)=\{\|x^1\pm x^2 \pm \cdots \pm x^k\|\in \mathbb F_q: x^j\in E, ~j=1,2,\ldots, k\},$$ where $\|α\|=α_1^2+\cdots+ α_d^2$ for $α=(α_1, \ldots, α_d) \in \mathbb F_q^d.$ In this setting, the $k$-resultant modulus set problem is to determine the minimal cardinality of $E\subset \mathbb F_q^d$ such that $Δ_k(E) = \mathbb…
Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a finite field of order $q$ and $\mathcal{E}$ be a set in $\mathbb{F}_q^d$. The distance set of $\mathcal{E}$, denoted by $Δ(\mathcal{E})$, is the set of distinct distances determined by the pairs of points in $\mathcal{E}$. Very recently, Iosevich, Koh, and Parshall (2018) proved that if $|\mathcal{E}|\gg q^{d/2}$, then the quotient set of $Δ(\mathcal{E})$ satisfies \[\left\vert\frac{Δ(\mathcal{E})}{Δ(\mathcal{E})}\right\vert=\left\vert \left\lbrace\frac{a}{b}\colon a, b\in Δ(\mathcal{E}), b\ne 0\right\rbrace\right\vert\gg q.\] In this paper, we break the exponent $d/2$ …
A celebrated unit distance conjecture due to Erd\H os says that that the unit distances cannot arise more than $C_εn^{1+ε}$ times (for any $ε>0$) among $n$ points in the Euclidean plane (see e.g. \cite{SST84} and the references contained therein). In three dimensions, the conjectured bound is $Cn^{\frac{4}{3}}$ (see e.g. \cite{KMSS12} and \cite{Z19}). In dimensions four and higher, this problem, in its general formulation, loses meaning because the Lens example shows that one can construct a set of $n$ points in dimension $4$ and higher where the unit distance arises $\approx n^2$ times (see e…
A recent generalization of the Erdős Unit Distance Problem, proposed by Palsson, Senger and Sheffer, asks for the maximum number of unit distance paths with a given number of vertices in the plane and in $3$-space. Studying a variant of this question, we prove sharp bounds on the number of unit distance paths and cycles on the sphere of radius $1/\sqrt{2}$. We also consider a similar problem about $3$-regular unit distance graphs in $\mathbb{R}^3$.
On the finite field spherical restriction conjecture in four dimensions: the sharp endpoint and applications
Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Xidian University(西安电子科技大学数学与 interdisciplinary 科学研究院);Institute of Mathematical Sciences, ShanghaiTech University(上海科技大学数学科学研究所)
Clique complexes of Erdős-Rényi random graphs with edge probability between $n^{-{1\over 3}}$ and $n^{-{1\over 2}}$ are shown to be aas not simply connected. This entails showing that a connected two dimensional simplicial complex for which every subcomplex has fewer than three times as many edges as vertices must have the homotopy type of a wedge of circles, two spheres and real projective planes. Note that $n^{-{1\over 3}}$ is a threshold for simple connectivity and $n^{-{1\over 2}}$ is one for vanishing first $\F_2$ homology.
Quadratic distances in even dimensions over prime fields
Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Xidian University(西安电子科技大学数学与交叉科学研究院);National Taiwan University(台湾大学);VNU University of Science, Hanoi, Vietnam(越南河内越南国立大学自然科学大学);Institute of Mathematical Sciences, ShanghaiTech University(上海科技大学数理学院)
In the random geometric graph model $\mathsf{Geo}_d(n,p)$, we identify each of our $n$ vertices with an independently and uniformly sampled vector from the $d$-dimensional unit sphere, and we connect pairs of vertices whose vectors are ``sufficiently close'', such that the marginal probability of an edge is $p$. We investigate the problem of testing for this latent geometry, or in other words, distinguishing an Erdős-Rényi graph $\mathsf{G}(n, p)$ from a random geometric graph $\mathsf{Geo}_d(n, p)$. It is not too difficult to show that if $d\to \infty$ while $n$ is held fixed, the two distrib…
We discuss a unified approach to a class of geometric combinatorics incidence problems in $2D$, of the Erdös distance type. The goal is obtaining the second moment estimate, that is given a finite point set $S$ and a function $f$ on $S\times S$, an upper bound on the number of solutions of $$ f(p,p') = f(q,q')\neq 0,\qquad (p,p',q,q')\in S\times S\times S\times S. \qquad(*) $$ E.g., $f$ is the Euclidean distance in the plane, sphere, or a sheet of the two-sheeted hyperboloid. Our tool is the Guth-Katz incidence theorem for lines in $\mathbb{RP}^3$, but we focus on how the original $2D$ problem…