On the Minimum Diameter of Plane Integral Point Sets

Abstract

Since ancient times, mathematicians have considered geometrical objects with integral side lengths. We consider plane integral point sets $P$, which are sets of $n$ points in the plane with pairwise integral distances, where not all the points are collinear.

The largest occurring distance is called its diameter. Naturally, the question about the minimum possible diameter $d(2,7)$ of a plane integral point set consisting of $7$ points arises. We give some new exact values and describe state-of-the-art algorithms to obtain them. It turns out that plane integral point sets with minimum diameter consist very likely of subsets with many collinear points. For this special kind of point sets, we prove a lower bound for $d(2,n)$ achieving the known upper bound $n^{c_2\log \log n}$ up to a constant in the exponent.
A famous question of Erdés asks for plane integral point sets with no $3$ points on a line and no $4$ points on a circle. Here, we talk of point sets in general position and denote the corresponding minimum diameter by $d(2,n)$. Recently $d(2,7)=22270$ could be determined via an exhaustive search.