Pinned-base simplex, a Furstenberg type problem, and incidences in finite vector spaces

Abstract

In this paper we prove a sharp condition to guarantee of having a positive proportion of all congruence classes of triangles in given sets in $\mathbb{F}_q^2$. More precisely, for $A, B, C\subset \mathbb{F}_q^2$, if $|A||B||C|^{1/2}\gg q^4$, then for any $\lambda\in \mathbb{F}_q\setminus \{0\}$, the number of congruence classes of triangles with vertices in $A\times B\times C$ and one side-length $\lambda$ is at least $\gg q^2$. As a consequence, the number of congruence classes of triangles with vertices in $A\times B\times C$ is at least $\gg q^3$. The main ingredients in our proof are a recent incidence bound between points and rigid motions due to the author and Semin Yoo (2023) and a result on a Furstenberg type problem. When three sets are the same, we give a unified and new proof for all the best current results due to Bennett, Hart, Iosevich, Pakianathan, and Rudnev (2017) and McDonald (2020). The novelty of this approach is to present an application of results on the number of $k$-rich rigid motions in studying the distribution of simplex. A number of related questions will be also addressed in this paper.Comment: 21 page