In this paper we study the generalized Erdos-Falconer distance problems in the finite field setting. The generalized distances are defined in terms of polynomials, and various formulas for sizes of distance sets are obtained. In particular, we develop a simple formula for estimating the cardinality of distance sets determined by diagonal polynomials. As a result, we generalize the spherical distance problems due to Iosevich and Rudnev and the cubic distance problems due to Iosevich and Koh. Moreover, our results are of higher dimensional version for Vu's work on two dimension. In addition, we set up and study the generalized pinned distance problems in finite fields. We give a nice generalization of some recent work in which the pinned distance problems related to spherical distances were investigated. Discrete Fourier analysis and exponential sum estimates play an important role in our proof.
We prove several incidence theorems in vector spaces over finite fields using bounds for various classes of exponential sums and apply these to Erdos-Falconer type distance problems.
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 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 the Erdös/Falconer distance problem in vector spaces over finite fields. Let ${\Bbb F}_q$ be a finite field with $q$ elements and take $E \subset {\Bbb F}^d_q$, $d \ge 2$. We develop a Fourier analytic machinery, analogous to that developed by Mattila in the continuous case, for the study of distance sets in ${\Bbb F}^d_q$ to provide estimates for minimum cardinality of the distance set $Δ(E)$ in terms of the cardinality of $E$. Kloosterman sums play an important role in the proof.
In this paper we study extension problems, averaging problems, and generalized Erdos-Falconer distance problems associated with arbitrary homogeneous varieties in three dimensional vector space over finite fields. In the case when homogeneous varieties in three dimension do not contain any plane passing through the origin, we obtain the general best possible results on aforementioned three problems. In particular, our results on extension problems recover and generalize the work due to Mockenhaupt and Tao who completed the particular conical extension problems in three dimension. Investigating…
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…
The classical Erdős-Turán inequality on the distribution of roots for complex polynomials can be equivalently stated in a potential theoretic formulation, that is, if the logarithmic potential generated by a probability measure on the unit circle is close to $0$, then this probability measure is close to the uniform distribution. We generalize this classical inequality from $d=1$ to higher dimensions $d>1$ with the class of Riesz potentials which includes the logarithmic potential as a special case. In order to quantify how close a probability measure is to the uniform distribution in a genera…
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…
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…
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)
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)