Oscillatory Integrals and Falconer's Conjecture

The project is on the restriction theory in Fourier analysis. This field is concerns functions with Fourier transform (frequencies) supported (non-zero at most) on some curved objects such as a sphere or a cone. Such functions appear naturally in several areas of science and mathematics: in the study of Schrödinger equations, wave equations and number theory.

For instance, a solution to the linear wave equation can be represented as a function with Fourier transform supported on a cone. Investigating these functions allows one to understand how waves evolve in time. In number theory, one can count the number of integer solutions to some Diophantine equations (polynomial equations with integer coefficients) by estimating such functions.

Namely, if the corresponding functions are concentrated, then one expects the Diophantine equation to have many integer solutions. And an upper bound on the number of solutions can be given in terms of how spread out the functions are. This project will be focused on how the curvature of the Fourier support prevents the functions from being concentrated.

The work will be concentrated on oscillatory integrals and related to Falconer's conjecture. The latter is an unsolved question concerning the sets of Euclidean distances between points in compact d-dimensional spaces. The projects on oscillatory integrals concern the restriction conjecture, the Hormander operator, and decoupling questions.

For the restriction conjecture, Stein's restriction conjecture will be studied in higher dimensions and in dimension three. For the Hörmander operator the Bochner-Riesz conjecture will be investigated by considering it as a Hörmander operator not satisfying Bourgain's "generic failure" condition. Work will be done on the dimension of radial projections with applications surrounding Falconer's conjecture.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.