Extensions of a result of Elekes and R\'onyai

Many problems in combinatorial geometry can be formulated in terms of curves or surfaces containing many points of a cartesian product. In 2000, Elekes and R\'onyai proved that if the graph of a polynomial contains $cn^2$ points of an $n\times n\times n$ cartesian product in $\mathbb{R}^3$, then the polynomial has the form $f(x,y)=g(k(x)+l(y))$ or $f(x,y)=g(k(x)l(y))$. They used this to prove a conjecture of Purdy which states that given two lines in $\mathbb{R}^2$ and $n$ points on each line, if the number of distinct distances between pairs of points, one on each line, is at most $cn$, then the lines are parallel or orthogonal. We extend the Elekes-R\'onyai Theorem to a less symmetric cartesian product. We also extend the Elekes-R\'onyai Theorem to one dimension higher on an $n\times n\times n\times n$ cartesian product and an asymmetric cartesian product. We give a proof of a variation of Purdy's conjecture with fewer points on one of the lines. We finish with a lower bound for our main result in one dimension higher with asymmetric cartesian product, showing that it is near-optimal.Comment: 23 page

An O(n log n)-Time Algorithm for the Restricted Scaffold Assignment

The assignment problem takes as input two finite point sets S and T and establishes a correspondence between points in S and points in T, such that each point in S maps to exactly one point in T, and each point in T maps to at least one point in S. In this paper we show that this problem has an O(n log n)-time solution, provided that the points in S and T are restricted to lie on a line (linear time, if S and T are presorted).Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

O(N) models within the local potential approximation

Using Wegner-Houghton equation, within the Local Potential Approximation, we study critical properties of O(N) vector models. Fixed Points, together with their critical exponents and eigenoperators, are obtained for a large set of values of N, including N=0 and N\to\infty. Polchinski equation is also treated. The peculiarities of the large N limit, where a line of Fixed Points at d=2+2/n is present, are studied in detail. A derivation of the equation is presented together with its projection to zero modes.Comment: 27 pages, LaTeX with psfig, 7 PostScript figures. One reference corrected and one added with respect to the journal versio