Logo
All Random Solved Random Open
SOLVED
Let $A\subset \mathbb{R}^2$ be a set of $n$ points. Can there be $\gg n$ many distinct distances each of which occurs for more than $n$ many pairs from $A$?
Asked by Erdős and Pach. Hopf and Pannowitz [HoPa34] proved that the largest distance between points of $A$ can occur at most $n$ times, but it is unknown whether a second such distance must occur (see [132]).

The answer is yes: Bhowmick [Bh24] constructs a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^2$ such that $\lfloor\frac{n}{4}\rfloor$ distances occur at least $n+1$ times. More generally, they construct, for any $m$ and large $n$, a set of $n$ points such that $\lfloor \frac{n}{2(m+1)}\rfloor$ distances occur at least $n+m$ times.