5,424 research outputs found
On the number of tetrahedra with minimum, unit, and distinct volumes in three-space
We formulate and give partial answers to several combinatorial problems on
volumes of simplices determined by points in 3-space, and in general in
dimensions. (i) The number of tetrahedra of minimum (nonzero) volume spanned by
points in \RR^3 is at most , and there are point sets
for which this number is . We also present an time
algorithm for reporting all tetrahedra of minimum nonzero volume, and thereby
extend an algorithm of Edelsbrunner, O'Rourke, and Seidel. In general, for
every k,d\in \NN, , the maximum number of -dimensional
simplices of minimum (nonzero) volume spanned by points in \RR^d is
. (ii) The number of unit-volume tetrahedra determined by
points in \RR^3 is , and there are point sets for which this
number is . (iii) For every d\in \NN, the minimum
number of distinct volumes of all full-dimensional simplices determined by
points in \RR^d, not all on a hyperplane, is .Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, a preliminary version has appeard in proceedings
of the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 200
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
On distinct distances in homogeneous sets in the Euclidean space
A homogeneous set of points in the -dimensional Euclidean space
determines at least distinct distances
for a constant . In three-space, we slightly improve our general bound
and show that a homogeneous set of points determines at least
distinct distances
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