A Note on the Number of General 4-holes in (Perturbed) Grids

Considering a variation of the classical Erdos-Szekeres type problems, we count the number of general 4-holes (not necessarily convex, empty 4-gons) in squared Horton sets of size $ntimesn$. Improving on previous upper and lower bounds we show that this number is $n^2log n)$, which constitutes the currently best upper bound on minimizing the number of general $4$-holes for any set of $n$ points in the plane. To obtain the improved bounds, we prove a result of independent interest. We show that $d=1^n d)d^2 = log n)$, where $d)$ is Euler's phi-function, the number of positive integers less than~$d$ which are relatively prime to $d$. This arithmetic function is also called Euler's totient function and plays a role in number theory and cryptography.