Good bounds for sets lacking skew corners

Abstract

A skew corner is a triple of points in $\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z}$ of the form $(x,y), (x, y + a)$ and $(x + a, y')$. Pratt posed the following question: how large can a set $A \subseteq [n] \times [n]$ be, provided it contains no non-trivial skew corner (i.e. one for which $a\not=0$)? We prove that $|A| \leq \exp(- c\log^c n) n^2$, for an absolute constant $c > 0$, which, along with a construction of Beker, essentially resolves Pratt's question. Our argument is represents a two-dimensional variant of the method of Kelley and Meka, which they used to prove Behrend-type bounds in Roth's theorem. A very similar result was obtained independently and simultaneously by Jaber, Lovett and Ostuni.