Avoiding right angles and certain Hamming distances (Q6051134)

This paper is a contribution to additive combinatorics (or to geometry over finite fields). More precisely, the first result of the paper shows that the largest size of a subset of \(\mathbb{F}_q^n\) avoiding right angles (namely, 3 distinct vectors \(x, y, z\) such that \(x -z\) and \(y -z\) are perpendicular to each other) is at most \(O(n^{q-2})\). Let us now move to the second result of the paper. It shown that a subset of \(\mathbb{F}_q^n\) avoiding triangles with all right angles can have size at most \(O(n^{2q-2})\). Furthermore, asymptotically tight bounds are given for the largest possible size of a subset \(A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_q^n\) for which \(x-y\) is not self-orthogonal for any distinct \(x, y\in A\). The exact answer depends on the residue of \(q\) modulo \(3\). The main technique used in the proofs is the so-called ``slice method''. This method is combined with other ideas, including some extremal set theory.