Rectangles, triangles and Schrödinger waves

Abstract

Can a finite set of lattice points determine many rectangles and few isosceles triangles? This turns out to be a surprisingly interesting question in combinatorial geometry that we answer using basic analytic number theory combined with a finite-field construction. The result is useful because it gives obstructions to Mizohata--Takeuchi-type estimates in the setting of the paraboloid. Specifically, we establish transference between Euclidean and periodic weighted $\mathrm{L}^2$ estimates for solutions to the Schrödinger equation, and then relate the failure of the latter to quantities tied to combinatorial problems, such as the one above. By completing this programme we give new explicit combinatorial counterexamples to the paraboloid case of the Mizohata--Takeuchi conjecture, which was recently shown to be false by Cairo for curved hypersurfaces.