Extremal problems on triangle areas in two and three dimensions

TL;DR

This paper advances the understanding of extremal triangle area problems by providing new upper bounds on the number of same-area triangles in point sets in the plane and 3D, and explores special configurations and minimal-area triangles.

Contribution

The paper introduces the first improved upper bound on the number of unit-area triangles in the plane and extends extremal area results to three-dimensional point sets.

Findings

New $O(n^{44/19})$ bound for unit-area triangles in the plane.

Progress on minimal-area triangle counts in various point configurations.

New $O(n^{17/7}eta(n))$ bound for 3D point sets, improving previous results.

Abstract

The study of extremal problems on triangle areas was initiated in a series of papers by Erd\H{o}s and Purdy in the early 1970s. In this paper we present new results on such problems, concerning the number of triangles of the same area that are spanned by finite point sets in the plane and in 3-space, and the number of distinct areas determined by the triangles. In the plane, our main result is an $O(n^{44/19}) =O(n^{2.3158})$ upper bound on the number of unit-area triangles spanned by $n$ points, which is the first breakthrough improving the classical bound of $O(n^{7/3})$ from 1992. We also make progress in a number of important special cases: We show that (i) For points in convex position, there exist $n$-element point sets that span $\Omega(n\log n)$ triangles of unit area. (ii) The number of triangles of minimum (nonzero) area determined by $n$ points is at most ${2/3}(n^2-n)$; there exist $n$-element point sets (for arbitrarily large $n$) that span $(6/\pi^2-o(1))n^2$ minimum-area triangles. (iii) The number of acute triangles of minimum area determined by $n$ points is O(n); this is asymptotically tight. (iv) For $n$ points in convex position, the number of triangles of minimum area is O(n); this is asymptotically tight. (v) If no three points are allowed to be collinear, there are $n$-element point sets that span $\Omega(n\log n)$ minimum-area triangles (in contrast to (ii), where collinearities are allowed and a quadratic lower bound holds). In 3-space we prove an $O(n^{17/7}\beta(n))= O(n^{2.4286})$ upper bound on the number of unit-area triangles spanned by $n$ points, where $\beta(n)$ is an extremely slowly growing function related to the inverse Ackermann function. The best previous bound, $O(n^{8/3})$, is an old result from 1971.