Strong geodetic problem on Cartesian products of graphs

The strong geodetic problem is a recent variation of the geodetic problem. For a graph $G$, its strong geodetic number ${\rm sg}(G)$ is the cardinality of a smallest vertex subset $S$, such that each vertex of $G$ lies on a fixed shortest path between a pair of vertices from $S$. In this paper, the strong geodetic problem is studied on the Cartesian product of graphs. A general upper bound for ${\rm sg}(G \,\square\, H)$ is determined, as well as exact values for $K_m \,\square\, K_n$, $K_{1, k} \,\square\, P_l$, and certain prisms. Connections between the strong geodetic number of a graph and its subgraphs are also discussed.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

An Improved Point-Line Incidence Bound Over Arbitrary Fields

We prove a new upper bound for the number of incidences between points and lines in a plane over an arbitrary field $\mathbb{F}$, a problem first considered by Bourgain, Katz and Tao. Specifically, we show that $m$ points and $n$ lines in $\mathbb{F}^2$, with $m^{7/8}<n<m^{8/7}$, determine at most $O(m^{11/15}n^{11/15})$ incidences (where, if $\mathbb{F}$ has positive characteristic $p$, we assume $m^{-2}n^{13}\ll p^{15}$). This improves on the previous best known bound, due to Jones. To obtain our bound, we first prove an optimal point-line incidence bound on Cartesian products, using a reduction to a point-plane incidence bound of Rudnev. We then cover most of the point set with Cartesian products, and we bound the incidences on each product separately, using the bound just mentioned. We give several applications, to sum-product-type problems, an expander problem of Bourgain, the distinct distance problem and Beck's theorem.Comment: 18 pages. To appear in the Bulletin of the London Mathematical Societ