The sharp exponent for the minimal distance problem

Abstract

We show that for every fixed $\varepsilon>0$, there exist arbitrarily large families of point-line pairs $(x_1,\ell_1),\ldots,(x_n,\ell_n)$ in $[0,1]^2$, with $x_i \in \ell_i$ for all $i$, and such that $\operatorname{dist}(x_i,\ell_j)\ge n^{-2/3-\varepsilon}$ for all $i \neq j$. Combined with a previous result of Cohen, the author, and Zakharov, this solves the minimal distance problem. The same construction also comes with an unexpected finite field consequence: for every $\varepsilon>0$, there exists a set of primes $q$ of positive relative density for which $\mathbb F_q^2$ contains an induced point-line matching of size $\gtrsim q^{3/2-\varepsilon}$. This disproves a conjecture of Hunter, the author, Verstra\"ete and Zhang.