In this paper, we prove a new point-sphere incidence bound in vector spaces over finite fields. More precisely, let $P$ be a set of points and $S$ be a set of spheres in $\mathbb{F}_q^d$. Suppose that $|P|, |S|\le N$, we prove that the number of incidences between $P$ and $S$ satisfies \[I(P, S)\le N^2q^{-1}+q^{\frac{d-1}{2}}N,\] under some conditions on $d, q$, and radii. This improves the known upper bound $N^2q^{-1}+q^{\frac{d}{2}}N$ in the literature. As an application, we show that for $A\subset \mathbb{F}_q$ with $q^{1/2}\ll |A|\ll q^{\frac{d^2+1}{2d^2}}$, one has \[\max \left\lbrace |A+A|,~ |dA^2|\right\rbrace \gg \frac{|A|^d}{q^{\frac{d-1}{2}}}.\] This improves earlier results on this sum-product type problem over arbitrary finite fields.
The vertex-edge incidence matrix of a (connected) unicyclic graph G is a square matrix which is invertible if and only if the cycle of G is an odd cycle. A combinatorial formula of the inverse of the incidence matrix of an odd unicyclic graph was known. A combinatorial formula of the Moore-Penrose inverse of the incidence matrix of an even unicyclic graph is presented solving an open problem.
It has been an open problem to find the Moore-Penrose inverses of the incidence, Laplacian, and signless Laplacian matrices of families of graphs except trees and unicyclic graphs. Since the inverse formulas for an odd unicyclic graph and an even unicyclic graph are quite different, we consider wheel graphs as they are formed from odd or even cycles. In this article solve the open problem for wheel graphs. This work has an interesting connection to inverses of circulant matrices.
Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a finite field of $q$ elements where $q$ is a large odd prime power and $Q =a_1 x_1^{c_1}+...+a_dx_d^{c_d}\in \mathbb{F}_q[x_1,...,x_d]$, where $2\le c_i\le N$, $\gcd(c_i,q)=1$, and $a_i\in \mathbb{F}_q$ for all $1\le i\le d$. A $Q$-sphere is a set of the form $\lbrace x\in \mathbb{F}_q^d | Q(x-b)=r\rbrace$, where $b\in \mathbb{F}_q^d, r\in \mathbb{F}_q$. We prove bounds on the number of incidences between a point set $\mathcal{P}$ and a $Q$-sphere set $\mathcal{S}$, denoted by $I(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{S})$, as the following. $$| I(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{S})-\frac{|\mathcal{…
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 $Ω\left(n^{7/9}/{\rm polylog} \,n\right)$. This bound is significantly larger than the conjectured bound $Ω(n^{2/3})$ for general point sets in $\mathbb R^3$. We also show that the number of unit distances determined by $n$ points on a surface $V$, as above, is $O(n^{4/3})$, a bound that matches the best known planar bound, and is worst-case tight in 3-space. This is in sharp contrast with the bes…
Notions of sesquiconstructible complexes and odd iterated stellar subdivisions are introduced, and some of their basic properties are verified. The Charney-Davis conjecture is then proven for odd iterated stellar subdivisions of sesquiconstructible balls and spheres.
We use elementary methods to prove an incidence theorem for points and spheres in $\mathbb{F}_q^n$. As an application, we show that any point set of $P\subset \mathbb{F}_q^2$ with $|P|\geq 5q$ determines a positive proportion of all circles. The latter result is an analogue of Beck's Theorem for circles which is optimal up to multiplicative constants.
We consider the structures of the plane-line and point-line incidence matrices of the projective space $\mathrm{PG}(3,q)$ connected with orbits of planes, points, and lines under the stabilizer group of the twisted cubic. In the literature, lines are partitioned into classes, each of which is a union of line orbits. In this paper, for all $q$, even and odd, we determine the incidence matrices connected with a family of orbits of the class named $\mathcal{O}_6$. This class contains lines external to the twisted cubic. The considered family include an essential part of all $\mathcal{O}_6$ orbits…
More than once we have heard that the Charney-Davis Conjecture makes sense only for odd-dimensional spheres. This is to point out that in fact it is also a statement about even-dimensional spheres.
We present a technique for deriving lower bounds for incidences with hypersurfaces in ${\mathbb R}^d$ with $d\ge 4$. These bounds apply to a large variety of hypersurfaces, such as hyperplanes, hyperspheres, paraboloids, and hypersurfaces of any degree. Beyond being the first non-trivial lower bounds for various incidence problems, our bounds show that some of the known upper bounds for incidence problems in ${\mathbb R}^d$ are tight up to an extra $\varepsilon$ in the exponent. Specifically, for every $m$, $d\ge 4$, and $\varepsilon>0$ there exist $m$ points and $n$ hypersurfaces in ${\mathbb…
We show that $m$ points and $n$ smooth algebraic surfaces of bounded degree in $\mathbb{R}^3$ satisfying suitable nondegeneracy conditions can have at most $O(m^{\frac{2k}{3k-1}}n^{\frac{3k-3}{3k-1}}+m+n)$ incidences, provided that any collection of $k$ points have at most O(1) surfaces passing through all of them, for some $k\geq 3$. In the case where the surfaces are spheres and no three spheres meet in a common circle, this implies there are $O((mn)^{3/4} + m +n)$ point-sphere incidences. This is a slight improvement over the previous bound of $O((mn)^{3/4} β(m,n)+ m +n)$ for $β(m,n)$ an (e…
Motivated by the incidence problems between points and flats of a symplectic polar space, we study a large class of submodules of the space of functions on the standard module of a finite symplectic group of odd characteristic. Our structure results on this class of submodules allow us to determine the $p$-ranks of the incidence matrices between points and flats of the symplectic polar space. In particular, we give an explicit formula for the $p$-rank of the generalized quadrangle ${\rm W}(3,q)$, where $q$ is an odd prime power. Combined with the earlier results of Sastry and Sin on the 2-rank…
In this paper we introduce a unified approach to deal with incidence problems between points and varieties over finite fields. More precisely, we prove that the number of incidences $I(\mathcal{P}, \mathcal{V})$ between a set $\mathcal{P}$ of points and a set $\mathcal{V}$ of varieties of a certain form satisfies $$\left\vert I(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{V})-\frac{|\mathcal{P}||\mathcal{V}|}{q^k}\right\vert\le q^{dk/2}\sqrt{|\mathcal{P}||\mathcal{V}|}.$$ This result is a generalization of the results of Vinh (2011), Bennett et al. (2014), and Cilleruelo et al. (2015). As applications of our incidenc…
Let $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ be a finite field of order $q$, where $q$ is an odd prime power. A quadratic subspace $(W,Q)$ of $(\mathbb{F}_{q}^{n},x_{1}^{2}+x_{2}^{2}+\cdots+x_{n}^{2})$ is called dot$_{k}$-subspace if $Q$ is isometrically isomorphic to $x_{1}^{2}+x_{2}^{2}+\cdots+x_{k}^{2}$. In this paper, we obtain bounds for the number of incidences $I(\mathcal{K},\mathcal{H})$ between a collection $\mathcal{K}$ of dot$_{k}$-subspaces and a collection $\mathcal{H}$ of dot$_{h}$-subspaces when $h \geq 4k-4$, which is given by \[\left | I(\mathcal{K},\mathcal{H})-\frac{|\mathcal{K}||\mathcal{H}|}{q^{k…
Exact Second-Order Zarankiewicz Numbers for Complete-Graph Incidence Families
South China Normal University（华南师范大学）；Linköping University（林雪平大学）；Jiangsu Provincial Scientific Research Center of Applied Mathematics（江苏省应用数学省级科研中心）；The Hong Kong Polytechnic University（香港理工大学）
Non-degeneracy was first defined for hyperplanes by Elekes-Tóth, and later extended to spheres by Apfelbaum-Sharir: given a set $P$ of $m$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ and some $β\in(0,1)$, a $(d-1)$-dimensional sphere (or a $(d-1)$-sphere) $S$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is called $β$-nondegenerate with respect to $P$ if $S$ does not contain a proper subsphere $S'$ such that $|S'\cap P|\geq β|S\cap P|$. Apfelbaum-Sharir found an upper bound for the number of incidences between points and nondegenerate spheres in three dimensions, which was recently used by Zahl to obtain the best known bound for the unit d…
In this paper we study the boundedness of extension operators associated with spheres in vector spaces over finite fields.In even dimensions, we estimate the number of incidences between spheres and points in the translated set from a subset of spheres. As a result, we improve the Tomas-Stein exponents, our previous results. The analytic approach and the explicit formula for Fourier transform of the characteristic function on spheres play an important role to get good bounds for exponential sums.
It is known that the $(2k-1)$-sphere has at most $2^{O(n^k \log n)}$ combinatorially distinct triangulations with $n$ vertices, for every $k\ge 2$. Here we construct at least $2^{Ω(n^k)}$ such triangulations, improving on the previous constructions which gave $2^{Ω(n^{k-1})}$ in the general case (Kalai) and $2^{Ω(n^{5/4})}$ for $k=2$ (Pfeifle-Ziegler). We also construct $2^{Ω\left(n^{k-1+\frac{1}{k}}\right)}$ geodesic (a.k.a. star-convex) $n$-vertex triangualtions of the $(2k-1)$-sphere. As a step for this (in the case $k=2$) we construct $n$-vertex $4$-polytopes containing $Ω(n^{3/2})$ facets…
Let $d$ and $k$ be integers with $1 \leq k \leq d-1$. Let $Λ$ be a $d$-dimensional lattice and let $K$ be a $d$-dimensional compact convex body symmetric about the origin. We provide estimates for the minimum number of $k$-dimensional linear subspaces needed to cover all points in $Λ\cap K$. In particular, our results imply that the minimum number of $k$-dimensional linear subspaces needed to cover the $d$-dimensional $n \times \cdots \times n$ grid is at least $Ω(n^{d(d-k)/(d-1)-\varepsilon})$ and at most $O(n^{d(d-k)/(d-1)})$, where $\varepsilon>0$ is an arbitrarily small constant. This near…
The sphere formula states that in an arbitrary finite abstract simplicial complex, the sum of the Euler characteristic of unit spheres centered at even-dimensional simplices is equal to the sum of the Euler characteristic of unit spheres centered at odd-dimensional simplices. It follows that if a geometry has constant unit sphere Euler characteristic, like a manifold, then all its unit spheres have zero Euler characteristic or the space itself has zero Euler characteristic. Especially, odd-dimensional manifolds have zero Euler characteristic, a fact usually verified either in algebraic topolog…
Let $\A$ be the incidence matrix of lines and points of the classical projective plane $PG(2,q)$ with $q$ odd. With respect to a conic in $PG(2,q)$, the matrix $\A$ is partitioned into 9 submatrices. The rank of each of these submatices over $\Ff_q$, the defining field of $PG(2,q)$, is determined.
We define numbers of the type Oj(N) and Ej(N) and the corresponding integer sequences. We prove that these integer sequences, e.g., SO(N) and SE(N) correspond to the number of odd and even walks in complete graphs. We then prove that there is a unique family of graphs which have exactly the same sequence of odd walks between connected nodes and of even walks between pairs of nodes at distance two, respectively. These graphs are obtained as the Kronecker product. We show that they are the incidence graphs of block designs, are distance-regular and Ramanujan graphs.
The point-plane incidence theorem states that the number of incidences between $n$ points and $m\geq n$ planes in the projective three-space over a field $F$, is $$O\left(m\sqrt{n}+ m k\right),$$ where $k$ is the maximum number of collinear points, with the extra condition $n< p^2$ if $F$ has characteristic $p>0$. This theorem also underlies a state-of-the-art Szemerédi-Trotter type bound for point-line incidences in $F^2$, due to Stevens and de Zeeuw. This review focuses on some recent, as well as new, applications of these bounds that lead to progress in several open geometric questions in $…
We show that the size of codes in projective space controls structural results for zeros of odd maps from spheres to Euclidean space. In fact, this relation is given through the topology of the space of probability measures on the sphere whose supports have diameter bounded by some specific parameter. Our main result is a generalization of the Borsuk--Ulam theorem, and we derive four consequences of it: (i) We give a new proof of a result of Simonyi and Tardos on topological lower bounds for the circular chromatic number of a graph; (ii) we study generic embeddings of spheres into Euclidean sp…
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…
In this paper we investigate the problem of finding the maximum volume polytopes, inscribed in the unit sphere of the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, with a given number of vertices. We solve this problem for polytopes with $d+2$ vertices in every dimension, and for polytopes with $d+3$ vertices in odd dimensions. For polytopes with $d+3$ vertices in even dimensions we give a partial solution.
We establish an improved upper bound for the number of incidences between m points and n circles in three dimensions. The previous best known bound, originally established for the planar case and later extended to any dimension $\ge 2$, is $O*(m^{2/3}n^{2/3} + m^{6/11}n^{9/11}+m+n)$, where the $O*(\cdot)$ notation hides sub-polynomial factors. Since all the points and circles may lie on a common plane (or sphere), it is impossible to improve the bound in R^3 without first improving it in the plane. Nevertheless, we show that if the set of circles is required to be "truly three-dimensional" in …
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…
Generalizing a result (the case $k = 1$) due to M. A. Perles, we show that any polytopal upper bound sphere of odd dimension $2k + 1$ belongs to the generalized Walkup class ${\cal K}_k(2k + 1)$, i.e., all its vertex links are $k$-stacked spheres. This is surprising since the $k$-stacked spheres minimize the face-vector (among all polytopal spheres with given $f_0,..., f_{k - 1}$) while the upper bound spheres maximize the face vector (among spheres with a given $f_0$). It has been conjectured that for $d\neq 2k + 1$, all $(k + 1)$-neighborly members of the class ${\cal K}_k(d)$ are tight. The…
