Incidences between points and generalized spheres over finite fields and related problems

TL;DR

This paper establishes bounds on incidences between points and generalized spheres over finite fields, using spectral graph theory, and explores related combinatorial geometry problems in finite field settings.

Contribution

It introduces new incidence bounds for points and generalized spheres over finite fields and rings, employing spectral graph analysis, and applies these to solve problems in finite field combinatorial geometry.

Findings

Proved incidence bounds with spectral graph methods.

Extended bounds to finite rings $Z_q$.

Applied results to pinned distance and isosceles triangle problems.

Abstract

Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a finite field of $q$ elements where $q$ is a large odd prime power and $Q =a_1 x_1^{c_1}+...+a_dx_d^{c_d}\in \mathbb{F}_q[x_1,...,x_d]$, where $2\le c_i\le N$, $\gcd(c_i,q)=1$, and $a_i\in \mathbb{F}_q$ for all $1\le i\le d$. A $Q$-sphere is a set of the form $\lbrace x\in \mathbb{F}_q^d | Q(x-b)=r\rbrace$, where $b\in \mathbb{F}_q^d, r\in \mathbb{F}_q$. We prove bounds on the number of incidences between a point set $\mathcal{P}$ and a $Q$-sphere set $\mathcal{S}$, denoted by $I(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{S})$, as the following. $$| I(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{S})-\frac{|\mathcal{P}||\mathcal{S}|}{q}|\le q^{d/2}\sqrt{|\mathcal{P}||\mathcal{S}|}.$$ We prove this estimate by studying the spectra of directed graphs. We also give a version of this estimate over finite rings $\mathbb{Z}_q$ where $q$ is an odd integer. As a consequence of the above bounds, we give an estimate for the pinned distance problem. In Sections $4$ and $5$, we prove a bound on the number of incidences between a random point set and a random $Q$-sphere set in $\mathbb{F}_q^d$. We also study the finite field analogues of some combinatorial geometry problems, namely, the number of generalized isosceles triangles, and the existence of a large subset without repeated generalized distances.