Using the subspace theorem to bound unit distances

zbMATH Open1300.52013arXiv1211.4948MaRDI QIDQ2249171FDOQ2249171

Authors: Ryan Schwartz 

Publication date: 9 July 2014

Published in: Moscow Journal of Combinatorics and Number Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We prove a special case of ErdH{o}s' unit distance problem using a corollary of the subspace theorem bounding the number of solutions of linear equations from a multiplicative group. We restrict our attention to unit distances coming from a multiplicative group of rank $r$ not too large. Specifically, given $varepsilon>0$ and $n$ points in the plane, we construct the unit distance graph from these points and distances and use the corollary above to bound certain paths of length $k$ in the graph giving at most $n^{1+varepsilon}$ unit distances from the group above. We require that the rank $rleclogn$ for some $c>0$ depending on $varepsilon$. This extends a result of J'ozsef Solymosi, Frank de Zeeuw and the author where we only considered unit distances that are roots of unity. Lastly we show that the lower bound configuration for the unit distance problem of ErdH{o}s consists of unit distances from a multiplicative subgroup of the form above.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1211.4948

Recommendations

• Erdős’s Unit Distance Problem
• Unit distances
• On the approximate unit distance problem
• Unit distance problems
• Rational distances with rational angles

zbMATH Keywords

rankunit distanceirredundant pathnondegenerate sum

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Erd?s problems and related topics of discrete geometry (52C10) Schmidt Subspace Theorem and applications (11J87)

Cited In (7)

• On sets with small additive doubling in product sets
• Rational distances with rational angles
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Further results on the subspace distance
• Unit distance graphs and algebraic integers
• Rank of Matrices with Entries from a Multiplicative Group
• Additive structure in convex translates

This page was built for publication: Using the subspace theorem to bound unit distances

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2249171)