Exploration on Incidence Geometry and Sum-Product Phenomena

Let $A$ be a subset of a finite field $F := \Z/q\Z$ for some prime $q$. If $|F|^\delta < |A| < |F|^{1-\delta}$ for some $\delta > 0$, then we prove the estimate $|A+A| + |A.A| \geq c(\delta) |A|^{1+\eps}$ for some $\eps = \eps(\delta) > 0$. This is a finite field analogue of a result of Erdos and Szemeredi. We then use this estimate to prove a Szemeredi-Trotter type theorem in finite fields, and obtain a new estimate for the Erdos distance problem in finite fields, as well as...

We study a Szemer\'edi-Trotter type theorem in finite fields. We then use this theorem to obtain an improved sum-product estimate in finite fields.

We use spectral theory and algebraic geometry to establish a higher-degree analogue of a Szemer\'edi--Trotter-type theorem over finite fields, with an application to polynomial expansion.

We prove a range of new sum-product type growth estimates over a general field $\mathbb{F}$, in particular the special case $\mathbb{F}=\mathbb{F}_p$. They are unified by the theme of "breaking the $3/2$ threshold", epitomising the previous state of the art. These estimates stem from specially suited applications of incidence bounds over $\mathbb{F}$, which apply to higher moments of representation functions. We establish the estimate $|R[A]| \gtrsim |A|^{8/5}$ for cardinal...

Arithmetic combinatorics is often concerned with the problem of bounding the behaviour of arbitrary finite sets in a group or ring with respect to arithmetic operations such as addition or multiplication. Similarly, combinatorial geometry is often concerned with the problem of bounding the behaviour of arbitrary finite collections of geometric objects such as points, lines, or circles with respect to geometric operations such as incidence or distance. Given the presence of ar...

We study a lower bound for the constant of the Szemer\'edi-Trotter theorem. In particular, we show that a recent infinite family of point-line configurations satisfies $I({\mathcal P},{\mathcal L})\ge (c+o(1)) |{\mathcal P}|^{2/3}|{\mathcal L}|^{2/3}$, with $c\approx 1.27$. Our technique is based on studying a variety of properties of Euler's totient function. We also improve the current best constant for Elekes's construction from 1 to about 1.27. From an expository perspect...

Let $F$ be a field of characteristic $p>2$ and $A\subset F$ have sufficiently small cardinality in terms of $p$. We improve the state of the art of a variety of sum-product type inequalities. In particular, we prove that $$ |AA|^2|A+A|^3 \gg |A|^6,\qquad |A(A+A)|\gg |A|^{3/2}. $$ We also prove several two-variable extractor estimates: ${\displaystyle |A(A+1)| \gg|A|^{9/8},}$ $$ |A+A^2|\gg |A|^{11/10},\; |A+A^3|\gg |A|^{29/28}, \; |A+1/A|\gg |A|^{31/30}.$$ Besides, we addres...

We prove several incidence theorems in vector spaces over finite fields using bounds for various classes of exponential sums and apply these to Erdos-Falconer type distance problems.

In this paper, we prove a new point-sphere incidence bound in vector spaces over finite fields. More precisely, let $P$ be a set of points and $S$ be a set of spheres in $\mathbb{F}_q^d$. Suppose that $|P|, |S|\le N$, we prove that the number of incidences between $P$ and $S$ satisfies \[I(P, S)\le N^2q^{-1}+q^{\frac{d-1}{2}}N,\] under some conditions on $d, q$, and radii. This improves the known upper bound $N^2q^{-1}+q^{\frac{d}{2}}N$ in the literature. As an application, w...

We study configurations of $n$ points and $n$ lines that form $\Theta(n^{4/3})$ incidences, when the point set is a Cartesian product. We prove structural properties of such configurations, such that there exist many families of parallel lines or many families of concurrent lines. We show that the line slopes have multiplicative structure or that many sets of $y$-intercepts have additive structure. We introduce the first infinite family of configurations with $\Theta(n^{4/3})...