Incidences with curves in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) (Q727188)

Summary: We prove that the number of incidences between \(m\) points and \(n\) bounded-degree curves with \(k\) degrees of freedom in \({\mathbb R}^d\) is \[ O\bigg(m^{\frac{k}{dk-d+1}+\varepsilon}n^{\frac{dk-d}{dk-d+1}}+\sum_{j=2}^{d-1} m^{\frac{k}{jk-j+1}+\varepsilon}n^{\frac{d(j-1)(k-1)}{(d-1)(jk-j+1)}} q_j^{\frac{(d-j)(k-1)}{(d-1)(jk-j+1)}}+m+n\bigg), \] for any \(\varepsilon>0\), where the constant of proportionality depends on \(k,\varepsilon\) and \(d\), provided that no \(j\)-dimensional surface of degree \(\leqslant c_j(k,d,\varepsilon)\), a constant parameter depending on \(k\), \(d\), \(j\), and \(\varepsilon\), contains more than \(q_j\) input curves, and that the \(q_j\)'s satisfy certain mild conditions. This bound generalizes the well-known planar incidence bound of \textit{J. Pach} and \textit{M. Sharir} [Comb. Probab. Comput. 7, No. 1, 121--127 (1998; Zbl 0901.52016)] to \(\mathbb{R}^d\). It generalizes a recent result of \textit{M. Sharir} and \textit{N. Solomon} [``Incidences between points and lines in \(\mathbb{R}^4\)'', in: Proceedings of the 30th annual symposium on computational geometry, SoCG '14, Kyoto, Japan, June 8--11, 2014. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 189--197 (2014; \url{doi:10.1145/2582112.2582147})] concerning point-line incidences in four dimensions (where \(d=4\) and \(k=2\)), and partly generalizes a recent result of \textit{L. Guth} [Discrete Comput. Geom. 53, No. 2, 428--444 (2015; Zbl 1317.52021)] (as well as the earlier bound of \textit{L. Guth} and \textit{N. H. Katz} [Ann. Math. (2) 181, No. 1, 155--190 (2015; Zbl 1310.52019)]) in three dimensions (Guth's three-dimensional bound has a better dependency on \(q_2\)). It also improves a recent d-dimensional general incidence bound by \textit{J. Fox} et al. [``A semi-algebraic version of Zarankiewicz's problem'', J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) (to appear), \url{arXiv:1407.5705}], in the special case of incidences with algebraic curves. Our results are also related to recent works by \textit{Z. Dvir} and \textit{S. Gopi} [``On the number of rich lines in truly high dimensional sets'', in: 31st international symposium on computational geometry, SoCG'15, Eindhoven, Netherlands, June 22--25, 2015. Wadern: Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz Zentrum für Informatik. 584--598 (2015; \url{doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.SOCG.2015.584})] and by \textit{M. Hablicsek} and \textit{Z. Scherr} [Discrete Comput. Geom. 55, No. 4, 955--962 (2016; Zbl 1351.52016)] concerning rich lines in high-dimensional spaces. Our bound is not known to be tight in most cases.