A proof of the multijoints conjecture and Carbery's generalization (Q783737)

The Joints Theorem provides an upper bound for the number of intersection points of \(d\) lines with independent directions from a given set \(L\) of lines in the vector space \(\mathbb{F}^d\) over a field \(\mathbb{F}\). The intersection points of \(d\) lines in this sense are called a \textit{joint.} In the Multijoints Theorem, the set \(L\) is replaced by \(d\) families of lines \(L_1,\ldots,L_d\) each of which is required to contain precisely one of the intersecting lines. In this article, the author proves, for the first time, the Multijoint Theorem without restriction on dimension \(d\) or field \(\mathbb{F}\) and without genericity assumptions on the joints. Moreover, he proves Carbery's conjecture which provides a bound on the sum over all joint multiplicities and can be seen as a discrete version of the multilinear Kakeya theorem. A key concept in the proof is a ``generalized intersection multiplicity'' of a line and a polynomial hypersurface at an intersection point that behaves reasonably well, even if the line is contained in the hypersurface, and allows a Bézout type upper bound. This simplifies application of the so called ``polynomial method'' in proofs as the distinction between lines on and off the polynomial hypersurface becomes less relevant.