Polygons and coplanar points on submanifolds of codimension 2

Abstract

Problem 73 on Green's list of open problems asks whether a smooth submanifold of codimension two in $\mathbb{R}^n$ must meet some affine two-plane in five points when $n$ is large. In this paper, we answer this question for every $n \geq 6$. Every nonempty relatively open subset of such a submanifold contains the vertices of an affinely regular pentagon, and the bound $n \geq 6$ is sharp for affinely regular pentagons. More generally, for every prime $p \geq 5$, the graph of a continuous map from a ball in $\mathbb{R}^{p-1}$ to $\mathbb{R}^2$ contains an affinely regular $p$-gon. A second argument gives six coplanar points when $n \geq 7$. Both proofs find the points by making the low Fourier modes of the graph map vanish along a circle.