A sharp bilinear restriction estimate for paraboloids (Q1430518)

If \(S\) is a smooth compact hypersurface with boundary in \({\mathbb R}\times{\mathbb R}^n\) with Lebesgue measure, \(d\sigma\), and \(\;\widehat{}\,\,\) denotes the space-time Fourier transform, the restriction problem is to determine \(q>0\) so that \[ \| (f\, d\sigma)\,\widehat{}\,\,\|_{L^q({\mathbb R}\times{\mathbb R}^n)} \leq C(q,S) \| f \|_{L^2(S)} \] for all test functions \(f\) on \(S\). The correponding bilinear problem holds for \(S_1\) and \(S_2\) (two hypersurfaces similar to \(S\)), if \[ \| (f_1\, d\sigma_1)\,\widehat{}\,\,\cdot(f_2\, d\sigma_2)\,\widehat{}\,\,\|_{L^q({\mathbb R}\times{\mathbb R}^n)} \leq C(q,S_1,S_2) \| f_1 \|_{L^2(S_1,d\sigma_1)}\| f_2\|_{L^2(S_2,d\sigma_2)}. \] By adapting in a clever way Wolff's argument for the case of subsets of the cone, the author solves this problem when \(q>(n+3)/(n+1)\) and \(S_1, S_2\) are disjoint subsets of ``elliptic surfaces'' such as paraboloids. Except for an endpoint, this answers a conjecture of Machedon and Klainerman.