Recent progress on the Kakeya conjecture (Q1861097): Difference between revisions

A Besicovitch set (or Kakeya set) \(E\subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is a set which contains a unit line segment in each direction. The Kakeya conjecture is : a Besicovitch set in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) must have Hausdorff dimension \(n\)? This has been verified for \(n=2\) but is open otherwise. The upper Minkowski dimension \(\overline{\dim}E\) is defined as \(\overline{\dim}E=n-\liminf_{\delta\to 0} \log_{\delta}|\mathcal N_\delta (E)|\), where \(\mathcal N_\delta (E)\) is the \(\delta\)-neighbourhood of \(E\). The Minkowski version of the Kakeya conjecture is: a Besicovitch set in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) must have upper Minkowski dimension \(n\)? The third version of the Kakeya conjecture is related to the \(L^p\)-boundedness of the Kakeya maximal function. For \(0<\delta\ll 1\), let \(\Omega\) be a maximal \(\delta\)-separated set of directions on \(S^{n-1}\). For each \(\omega\in \Omega\), let \(T_\omega\) be a \(\delta\times 1\) tube in the direction \(\omega\) in the ball. Let \(0<\lambda\leq 1\), and let \(\tilde{T_\omega}\) be a subset of \(T_\omega\) such that \(|\tilde{T_\omega}|=\lambda|T_\omega|\). One says that \(K_X(p,n)\) holds if for each \(\varepsilon>0\) there exists \(C_\varepsilon >0\) such that \(C_\varepsilon \delta^{-\varepsilon}|\bigcup_{\omega\in \Omega} \tilde{T_\omega}|\geq \lambda^p\delta^{n-p}\). The maximal version of the Kakeya conjecture is: We have \(K_X(n,n)\). The authors survey recent developments, mainly by themselves, on these conjectures on the period after the survey of \textit{T. Wolff} [``Recent work connected with the Kakeya problem'', in: ``Prospects in mathematics'' (Princeton, NJ, 1996), Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, pp. 129-162 (1999; Zbl 0934.42014)]. They review the geometric combinatorics method, the arithmetic combinatorics method, and hybrids of the two.