Triforce and Corners

Abstract

May the $\mathit{triforce}$ be the 3-uniform hypergraph on six vertices with edges $\{123',12'3,1'23\}$. We show that the minimum triforce density in a 3-uniform hypergraph of edge density $\delta$ is $\delta^{4-o(1)}$ but not $O(\delta^4)$. Let $M(\delta)$ be the maximum number such that the following holds: for every $\epsilon > 0$ and $G = \mathbb{F}_2^n$ with $n$ sufficiently large, if $A \subseteq G \times G$ with $A \ge \delta|G|^2$, then there exists a nonzero "popular difference" $d \in G$ such that the number of "corners" $(x,y), (x+d,y), (x,y+d) \in A$ is at least $(M(\delta) - \epsilon)|G|^2$. As a corollary via a recent result of Mandache, we conclude that $M(\delta) = \delta^{4-o(1)}$ and $M(\delta) = \omega(\delta^4)$. On the other hand, for $0 < \delta < 1/2$ and sufficiently large $N$, there exists $A \subseteq [N]^3$ with $|A|\ge\delta N^3$ such that for every $d \ne 0$, the number of corners $(x,y,z), (x+d,y,z),(x,y+d,z),(x,y,z+d) \in A$ is at most $\delta^{c \log (1/\delta)} N^3$. A similar bound holds in higher dimensions, or for any configuration with at least 5 points or affine dimension at least 3.