A conditional bound on sphere tangencies in all dimensions

Abstract

We use polynomial method techniques to bound the number of tangent pairs in a collection of $N$ spheres in $\mathbb{R}^n$ subject to a non-degeneracy condition, for any $n \geq 3$. The condition, inspired by work of Zahl for $n=3$, asserts that on any sphere of the collection one cannot have more than $B$ points of tangency concentrated on any low-degree subvariety of the sphere. For collections that satisfy this condition, we show that the number of tangent pairs is $O_{\epsilon}(B^{1/n - \epsilon} N^{2 - 1/n + \epsilon})$.