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Abstract:We study Turán-type extremal problems for alternating and unrestricted multilinear maps. For alternating order-$d$ multilinear maps $T: (\mathbb F^n)^d\to \mathbb{F}^m$, we determine, over algebraically closed fields of arbitrary characteristic, the largest $k$ such that every $T$ vanishes identically on $\mathbb{V}^d$ for some $k$-dimensional subspace $\mathbb{V}$. This extends the bilinear formula of Buhler, Gupta, and Harris [J. Algebra, 1987] to arbitrary order and resolves a question of Qiao [Discrete Anal., 2023]. We also solve the analogous problem for arbitrary, not necessarily alternating, multilinear maps by determining the largest $k$ such that every $T$ vanishes on $\mathbb{V}_1\times\cdots\times \mathbb{V}_d$ for some $k$-dimensional subspaces $\mathbb{V}_1,\dots,\mathbb{V}_d$. These results yield exact values, over algebraically closed fields, of the Feldman--Propp number [Adv. Math., 1992], the Turán number [Discrete Anal., 2023], and the Gow--Quinlan number [Linear Multilinear Algebra, 2006] associated with alternating multilinear maps. Finally, motivated by the Erdős box problem, we give a purely algebraic derivation of the Conlon--Pohoata--Zakharov lower bound [Discrete Anal., 2021] by combining analytic and partition rank estimates with an incidence count. In the relevant parameter range, we further show that every multilinear map defined over a finite field has many isotropic tuples of $2$-dimensional subspaces over extensions of sufficiently divisible degree. This rules out the natural route to improving the Conlon--Pohoata--Zakharov exponent by selecting multilinear maps with substantially fewer bad isotropic configurations.

Submission history

From: Qiyuan Chen [view email]
[v1] Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:40:15 UTC (20 KB)
[v2] Thu, 23 Jul 2026 06:10:10 UTC (31 KB)