Breaking the 3/2 barrier for unit distances in three dimensions

Abstract

We prove that every set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^3$ spans $O(n^{295/197+\epsilon})$ unit distances. This is an improvement over the previous bound of $O(n^{3/2})$. A key ingredient in the proof is a new result for cutting circles in $\mathbb{R}^3$ into pseudo-segments.