Corners with polynomial side length

Abstract

A $P$-polynomial corner, for $P\in \mathbb{Z}[z]$ a polynomial, is a triple of points $(x,y),(x+P(z),y),(x,y+P(z))$ for $x,y,z\in \mathbb{Z}$. In the case where $P$ has an integer root of multiplicity $1$, we show that if $A\subseteq [N{]}^2$ does not contain any nontrivial $P$-polynomial corners, then $$|A|{\ll }_P\frac{N^2}{(\log \log \log N{)}^c}$$ for some absolute constant $c>0$. This simultaneously generalizes a result of Shkredov about corner-free sets and a recent result of Peluse, Sah, and Sawhney about sets without $3$-term arithmetic progressions of common difference $z^2-1$. The main ingredients in our proof are a multidimensional quantitative concatenation result from our companion paper arXiv:2407.08636 and a novel degree-lowering argument for box norms.