Constructions for the Elekes-Szabó and Elekes-Rónyai problems (Q2309227)

\textit{G. Elekes} and \textit{E. Szabó} [Combinatorica 32, No. 5, 537--571 (2012; Zbl 1299.05018)] considered the size of the intersection of the zero set \(Z(F)\) of a 3-variable real polynomial \(F(x, y, z)\in\mathbb{R}[x, y, z]\) of degree \(d\) with a Cartesian product \(A\times B\times C\subseteq\mathbb{R}^3\), where \(|A|=|B|=|C|=n\). By the Schwartz-Zippel Lemma, we have \(|Z(F) \cap (A\times B\times C)|\leq c_dn^2\), and this bound cannot be improved in general. Elekes and Szabó called a polynomial \(F(x, y, z) \in \mathbb{R}[x, y, z]\) degenerate if there are intervals \(I_1 I_2,I_3\) and, for each \(i\), there is a smooth (infinitely differentiable) function \(\phi_i : I_i \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\), which has a smooth inverse, such that, for all \((x, y, z)\in I_1\times I_2\times I_3\), we have \(F(x, y, z) = 0\) if and only if \(\phi_1(x) + \phi_2(y) + \phi_3(z) = 0\). Elekes and Szabóshowed that there exists an \(\eta>0\) such that, for any non-degenerate polynomial of degree \(d\) \(F(x, y, z)\), one has \(|Z(F) \cap (A\times B\times C)|\leq c_d n^{2-\eta}\). \textit{O. E. Raz} et al. [Isr. J. Math. 227, No. 2, 663--690 (2018; Zbl 1403.52011)] proved this theorem with \(\eta=1/6\). The main result of the paper under review is a lower bound: there exists a polynomial \(F(x, y, z) \in \mathbb{R}[x, y, z]\) of degree 2, which is not degenerate such that, for any \(n\), there is a set \(A\subset \mathbb{R}\) of size \(n\) with \(|Z(F) \cap (A\times A\times A)|\leq cn^{3/2}\).