On Cartesian products which determine few distinct distances (Q668051)

Summary: Every set of points \(\mathcal{P}\) determines \(\Omega(|\mathcal{P}| / \log |\mathcal{P}|)\) distances. A close version of this was initially conjectured by Erdős in 1946 and rather recently proved by Guth and Katz. We show that when near this lower bound, a point set \(\mathcal{P}\) of the form \(A \times A\) must satisfy \(|A - A| \ll |A|^{2-\frac{2}{7}} \log^{\frac{1}{7}} |A|\). This improves recent results of Hanson and Roche-Newton.