On the Square Peg Problem and some Relatives

The Square Peg Problem asks whether every continuous simple closed planar curve contains the four vertices of a square. This paper proves this for the largest so far known class of curves. Furthermore we solve an analogous Triangular Peg Problem affirmatively, state topological intuition why the Rectangular Peg Problem should hold true, and give a fruitful existence lemma of edge-regular polygons on curves. Finally, we show that the problem of finding a regular octahedron on embedded spheres in R^3 has a "topological counter-example", that is, a certain test map with boundary condition exists.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure

Optimal bounds for the colored Tverberg problem

We prove a "Tverberg type" multiple intersection theorem. It strengthens the prime case of the original Tverberg theorem from 1966, as well as the topological Tverberg theorem of Barany et al. (1980), by adding color constraints. It also provides an improved bound for the (topological) colored Tverberg problem of Barany & Larman (1992) that is tight in the prime case and asymptotically optimal in the general case. The proof is based on relative equivariant obstruction theory.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures; revised version (February 2013), to appear in J. European Math. Soc. (JEMS

Quadratic Fields Admitting Elliptic Curves with Rational jj-Invariant and Good Reduction Everywhere

Clemm and Trebat-Leder (2014) proved that the number of quadratic number fields with absolute discriminant bounded by $x$ over which there exist elliptic curves with good reduction everywhere and rational $j$-invariant is $\gg x\log^{-1/2}(x)$. In this paper, we assume the $abc$-conjecture to show the sharp asymptotic $\sim cx\log^{-1/2}(x)$ for this number, obtaining formulae for $c$ in both the real and imaginary cases. Our method has three ingredients: (1) We make progress towards a conjecture of Granville: Given a fixed elliptic curve $E/\mathbb{Q}$ with short Weierstrass equation $y^2 = f(x)$ for reducible $f \in \mathbb{Z}[x]$, we show that the number of integers $d$, $|d| \leq D$, for which the quadratic twist $dy^2 = f(x)$ has an integral non-$2$-torsion point is at most $D^{2/3+o(1)}$, assuming the $abc$-conjecture. (2) We apply the Selberg--Delange method to obtain a Tauberian theorem which allows us to count integers satisfying certain congruences while also being divisible only by certain primes. (3) We show that for a polynomially sparse subset of the natural numbers, the number of pairs of elements with least common multiple at most $x$ is $O(x^{1-\epsilon})$ for some $\epsilon > 0$. We also exhibit a matching lower bound. If instead of the $abc$-conjecture we assume a particular tail bound, we can prove all the aforementioned results and that the coefficient $c$ above is greater in the real quadratic case than in the imaginary quadratic case, in agreement with an experimentally observed bias.Comment: 35 pages, 1 figur