A sharp bilinear restriction estimate for paraboloids

Recently Wolff obtained a sharp $L^2$ bilinear restriction theorem for bounded subsets of the cone in general dimension. Here we adapt the argument of Wolff to also handle subsets of ``elliptic surfaces’’ such as paraboloids and spheres. Except for an endpoint, this answers a conjecture of Machedon and Klainerman, and also improves upon the known restriction theory for the paraboloid and sphere.