arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Larry Guth.
This is a survey on an old open problem in combinatorics called the unit distance problem, and the field of mathematics around it, called incidence geometry. What do we know about the problem? Why is it difficult? How does it connect with other parts of math?
We introduce a general framework for curved Kakeya problems in $\mathbb{R}^n$, encompassing those arising from H\"ormander-type oscillatory integrals. Every family of curves determines a spray geometry, which allows us to use the projective geometry of paths in the study of curved Kakeya problems. We focus on the two extremes of the "best" and "worst" possible behaviors of curved Kakeya sets. We characterize when the incidence structure underlying Wolff's hairbrush argument persists. In particular, we prove that the existence of many totally geodesic surfaces, as required by Wolff's hairbrush argument, is equivalent to projective flatness of the associated spray. Within this projectively flat class, Bourgain's condition provides a clean dichotomy: when it holds, the family is direction-equivalent to a Bochner--Riesz type family of lines and satisfies the Katz--Wolff condition, and thus the Wang--Zahl result is applicable; when it fails, every totally geodesic surface supports a two-dimensional Kakeya set. We also show that under an extra semi-algebraic assumption, a family of curves in $\mathbb{R}^3$ admits a curved Kakeya set of Hausdorff dimension $2$ if and only if it admits a curved Kakeya set contained in a surface. Equivalently, if this compression is absent, every associated curved Kakeya set has dimension strictly greater than $2$.
This is a Seminaire Bourbaki survey of the proof of the Kakeya conjecture in three dimensions. The survey is written for a broad mathematical audience. We sketch all the ideas in the proof, with many pictures.
We present a streamlined and simplified proof of the Kakeya set conjecture in $\mathbb{R}^3$.
We give a detailed outline of the proof that the Kakeya conjecture follows from the sticky case. This proof is due to Wang and Zahl and appears in a recent paper. The sticky case was proven in earlier work of Wang-Zahl, building on an approach suggested by Katz-Tao.
Recently, Hong Wang and Joshua Zahl announced a proof of the 3-dimensional Kakeya conjecture. This is a survey article on the proof of Kakeya. We introduce the problem, discuss previous work and some of the difficulties of the problem, and describe the new ideas in the recent work.
We survey large value problems, including the large value problem for Dirichlet polynomials, the restriction problem, and problems from computer science. We describe known techniques and open problems, drawing on perspectives from all three fields.
We prove new bounds for how often Dirichlet polynomials can take large values. This gives improved estimates for a Dirichlet polynomial of length $N$ taking values of size close to $N^{3/4}$, which is the critical situation for several estimates in analytic number theory connected to prime numbers and the Riemann zeta function. As a consequence, we deduce a zero density estimate $N(\sigma,T)\le T^{30(1-\sigma)/13+o(1)}$ and asymptotics for primes in short intervals of length $x^{17/30+o(1)}$.
We identify a new way to divide the $\delta$-neighborhood of surfaces $\mathcal{M}\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ into a finitely-overlapping collection of rectangular boxes $S$. We obtain a sharp $(l^2,L^p)$ decoupling estimate using this decomposition, for the sharp range of exponents $2\leq p\leq 4$. Our decoupling inequality leads to new exponential sum estimates where the frequencies lie on surfaces which do not contain a line.
The matrix $p \rightarrow q$ norm is a fundamental quantity appearing in a variety of areas of mathematics. This quantity is known to be efficiently computable in only a few special cases. The best known algorithms for approximately computing this quantity with theoretical guarantees essentially consist of computing the $p\to q$ norm for $p,q$ where this quantity can be computed exactly or up to a constant, and applying interpolation. We analyze the matrix $2 \to q$ norm problem and provide an improved approximation algorithm via a simple argument involving the rows of a given matrix. For example, we improve the best-known $2\to 4$ norm approximation from $m^{1/8}$ to $m^{1/12}$. This insight for the $2\to q$ norm improves the best known $p \to q$ approximation algorithm for the region $p \le 2 \le q$, and leads to an overall improvement in the best-known approximation for $p \to q$ norms from $m^{25/128}$ to $m^{3 - 2 \sqrt{2}}$.
We use high-low frequency methods developed in the context of decoupling to prove sharp (up to $C_\epsilon R^\epsilon$) square function estimates for the moment curve $(t,t^2,\ldots,t^n)$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Our inductive scheme incorporates sharp square function estimates for auxiliary conical sets, which allows us to fully exploit lower dimensional information.
The restriction conjecture is one of the famous problems in harmonic analysis. There have been many methods developed in the study of the conjecture for the paraboloid. In this paper, we generalize the multilinear method of Bourgain and Guth for the paraboloid, and obtain restriction estimates for all quadratic manifolds of arbitrary codimensions. In particular, our theorem recovers the main theorem of Bourgain and Guth for the paraboloid. A new ingredient is a covering lemma for varieties whose proof relies on Tarski's projection theorem in real algebraic geometry. We also provide algorithms to compute several algebraic quantities that naturally appear in the argument. These algorithms rely on a cylindrical decomposition in real algebraic geometry.
We extend the small cap decoupling program established by Demeter, Guth, and Want to paraboloids in $\mathbb{R}^n$ for some range of $p$.
Let $\gamma:[0,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{S}^{2}$ be a non-degenerate curve in $\mathbb{R}^3$, that is to say, $\det\big(\gamma(\theta),\gamma'(\theta),\gamma''(\theta)\big)\neq 0$. For each $\theta\in[0,1]$, let $l_\theta=\{t\gamma(\theta):t\in\mathbb{R}\}$ and $\rho_\theta:\mathbb{R}^3\rightarrow l_\theta$ be the orthogonal projections. We prove an exceptional set estimate. For any Borel set $A\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ and $0\le s\le 1$, define $E_s(A):=\{\theta\in[0,1]: \text{dim}(\rho_\theta(A))<s\}$. We have $\text{dim}(E_s(A))\le 1+\frac{s-\text{dim}(A)}{2}$.
Let $\gamma:[0,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{S}^{2}$ be a non-degenerate curve in $\mathbb{R}^3$, that is to say, $\det\big(\gamma(\theta),\gamma'(\theta),\gamma"(\theta)\big)\neq 0$. For each $\theta\in[0,1]$, let $V_\theta=\gamma(\theta)^\perp$ and let $\pi_\theta:\mathbb{R}^3\rightarrow V_\theta$ be the orthogonal projections. We prove that if $A\subset \mathbb{R}^3$ is a Borel set, then for a.e. $\theta\in [0,1]$ we have $\text{dim}(\pi_\theta(A))=\min\{2,\text{dim} A\}$. More generally, we prove an exceptional set estimate. For $A\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ and $0\le s\le 2$, define $E_s(A):=\{\theta\in[0,1]: \text{dim}(\pi_\theta(A)) 2$, then for a.e. $\theta\in[0,1]$ we have $\mathcal{H}^2(\pi_\theta (A))>0$.
We study the degree of an $L$-Lipschitz map between Riemannian manifolds, proving new upper bounds and constructing new examples. For instance, if $X_k$ is the connected sum of $k$ copies of $\mathbb CP^2$ for $k \ge 4$, then we prove that the maximum degree of an $L$-Lipschitz self-map of $X_k$ is between $C_1 L^4 (\log L)^{-4}$ and $C_2 L^4 (\log L)^{-1/2}$. More generally, we divide simply connected manifolds into three topological types with three different behaviors. Each type is defined by purely topological criteria. For scalable simply connected $n$-manifolds, the maximal degree is $\sim L^n$. For formal but non-scalable simply connected $n$-manifolds, the maximal degree grows roughly like $L^n (\log L)^{\theta(1)}$. And for non-formal simply connected $n$-manifolds, the maximal degree is bounded by $L^\alpha$ for some $\alpha < n$.
Decoupling is a recent development in Fourier analysis, which has applications in harmonic analysis, PDE, and number theory. We survey some applications of decoupling and some of the ideas in the proof. This survey is aimed at a general mathematical audience. It is based on my 2022 ICM talk.
No power law systolic freedom is possible for the product of mod $2$ systoles of dimension $1$ and codimension $1$. This means that any closed $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold $M$ of bounded local geometry obeys the following systolic inequality: the product of its mod $2$ systoles of dimensions $1$ and $n-1$ is bounded from above by $c(n,\varepsilon) \mbox{Vol}(M)^{1+\varepsilon}$, if finite (if $H_1(M; \mathbb{Z}/2)$ is non-trivial).