16,605 research outputs found
An improved bound on the number of point-surface incidences in three dimensions
We show that points and smooth algebraic surfaces of bounded degree
in satisfying suitable nondegeneracy conditions can have at most
incidences, provided that any
collection of points have at most O(1) surfaces passing through all of
them, for some . In the case where the surfaces are spheres and no
three spheres meet in a common circle, this implies there are point-sphere incidences. This is a slight improvement over the previous
bound of for an (explicit) very
slowly growing function. We obtain this bound by using the discrete polynomial
ham sandwich theorem to cut into open cells adapted to the set
of points, and within each cell of the decomposition we apply a Turan-type
theorem to obtain crude control on the number of point-surface incidences. We
then perform a second polynomial ham sandwich decomposition on the irreducible
components of the variety defined by the first decomposition. As an
application, we obtain a new bound on the maximum number of unit distances
amongst points in .Comment: 17 pages, revised based on referee comment
Incidences between points and lines in three dimensions
We give a fairly elementary and simple proof that shows that the number of
incidences between points and lines in , so that no
plane contains more than lines, is (in the precise statement, the constant
of proportionality of the first and third terms depends, in a rather weak
manner, on the relation between and ).
This bound, originally obtained by Guth and Katz~\cite{GK2} as a major step
in their solution of Erd{\H o}s's distinct distances problem, is also a major
new result in incidence geometry, an area that has picked up considerable
momentum in the past six years. Its original proof uses fairly involved
machinery from algebraic and differential geometry, so it is highly desirable
to simplify the proof, in the interest of better understanding the geometric
structure of the problem, and providing new tools for tackling similar
problems. This has recently been undertaken by Guth~\cite{Gu14}. The present
paper presents a different and simpler derivation, with better bounds than
those in \cite{Gu14}, and without the restrictive assumptions made there. Our
result has a potential for applications to other incidence problems in higher
dimensions
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