Atiyah's Minkowski Space Conjecture Fails for Every $n\ge 3$

Abstract

Atiyah's Minkowski-space version of the configuration-of-points construction assigns to an admissible marked configuration of $n$ worldlines a collection of $n$ binary forms of degree $n-1$, whose roots are the ordered retarded celestial directions. He conjectured that these forms are always linearly independent. We disprove this conjecture for every $n\ge 3$. For $n=3$, an explicit planar one-parameter family yields a real coefficient determinant with exactly one simple zero in a specified interval. At this parameter, all six ordered celestial roots are distinct and the coefficient matrix has rank exactly two. A null-translation construction then multiplies the first three forms by a common factor and produces counterexamples for every $n>3$. Consequently, within the class of complete pairwise disjoint timelike affine lines, universal independence holds at $n=2$ and fails for every $n\ge 3$; for each of the counterexamples, the normalized Atiyah--Sutcliffe determinant is defined and vanishes.

23 pages