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A, B A, B A, B A, B A, B A, B 0,0 A, B 1

This document discusses greatest common divisors (GCDs) and their properties. It begins by defining GCDs and proving some basic results, like that any two integers have a GCD unless both are zero. It then introduces methods for computing GCDs using the division algorithm and characterizes the GCD as the largest element of the set of all integers that can be written as linear combinations of the two numbers. The document proves several key propositions about GCDs and their properties.

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72 views3 pages

A, B A, B A, B A, B A, B A, B 0,0 A, B 1

This document discusses greatest common divisors (GCDs) and their properties. It begins by defining GCDs and proving some basic results, like that any two integers have a GCD unless both are zero. It then introduces methods for computing GCDs using the division algorithm and characterizes the GCD as the largest element of the set of all integers that can be written as linear combinations of the two numbers. The document proves several key propositions about GCDs and their properties.

Uploaded by

ziafat shehzad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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GREATEST COMMON DIVISORS

Definition 0.1. Given two integers a and b a common divisor is an


integer d satisfying such that d|a and d|b.
Proposition 0.2. Show that unless a and b are both zero they have a greatest
common divisor
Problem 0.3. Let n be a natural number. Find the greatest common divisor
of n and 0.
Proposition 0.4. Let p be a prime number. Show that for any integer a
the greatest common divisor of p and a is either p or is 1.
Proposition 0.5. Let a and b be natural numbers. Write a = bq + r using
the division algorithm. Show that the common divisors of a and b are the
Eat b.
same as the common divisors of r and
This gives a practical way to compute greatest common divisors: take
the larger of a and b and replace it with its remainder when divided by the
other, and repeat until one of the numbers is zero.
Problem 0.6. What is the greatest common divisor of 120 and 168? of 59
and 1016?
Question 0.7. Can you show that this process always works?
There is another surprising way of characterizing the gcd. For two num-
bers a and b, we think about all the numbers you can get by adding multiples
of a and b together. We can imaging this by thinking of a and b as dollar
values of bills and then asking what prices can paid with them. For example,
if your country only issues a 6 dollar bill and a 14 dollar bill, can you buy
something that costs 10 dollars? Yes - you pay with two 14 dollar bills and
get three 6 dollar bills back in change. Can you buy something that costs
15 dollars? No - all the bills are worth an even number of dollars so there
is no way to get an odd net transaction. Formulated more abstractly this
concerns a set we have already seen:
Let Sa,b = {na + mb : n, m 2 Z}.
Proposition 0.8. If c is a common divisor of a and b then c|s for all Sa,b
tf b)|s.
Proposition 0.9. If s 2 Sa,b then gcd(a,
Proposition 0.10. If s 2 Sa,b then sx 2 Sa,b for all x 2 Z
Proposition 0.11. Sa,b = Z if and only if 1 2 S
Proposition 0.12. The set S0,0 is {0}. For any other a and b the set Sa,b
is infinite.
1
2 GREATEST COMMON DIVISORS

Proposition 0.13. If a|b then Sa,b is precisely the set of multiples of a.


The main fact we are aiming to prove is a more general version of the last
statement:
Proposition 0.14. For any a and b in Z, not both zero, the set Sa,b is
precisely the set of multiples of gcd(a, b).
Problem 0.15. Show that proposition 0.14 is equivalent to the statement
that gcd(a, b) 2 Sa,b .
The key ingredient in the proof of proposition 0.14 is this:
Proposition 0.16. Let s 2 Sa,b and write s = aq + r using the division
algorithm, then r 2 Sa,b (note that the same works if we divide by b instead
of a).
Using that you can prove:
Proposition 0.17. If c is the smallest positive element of Sa,b then c is a
common divisor of a and b.
This is almost enough to finish the proof of proposition 0.14. The only
missing piece is to show that this c must be the greatest common divisor,
not a smaller one. But using the earlier propositions we know that c must
be divisible by gcd(a, b).
Problem 0.18. Put all of the above
tagtogether to give a complete proof of
Proposition 0.14.
This characterization of the gcd turns out to be very useful. In particular
we frequently use the following:
Corollary 0.19. If the integers a and b have no common factors then there
are integers n and m so that an + bm = 1
GREATEST COMMON DIVISORS 3

Here is an important application:


Lemma 0.20 (Euclid’s Lemma). If p is a prime number and x and y are
integers such that p|xy then p|x or p|y
proof: Suppose p|xy but that p does not divide x. We need to show that
p|y. The assumption that p does not divide x means that gcd(p, x) = 1 (do
you see why?). The corollary above then says that there are integers n and
m so that:
nx + mp = 1
If we multiply both sides by y this
Gump
gives

nxy + mpy = y
We know that p divides nxy since p divides xy, and p obviously divides
mpy. Thus we have that p divides y as claimed. (Can you fill in the details
here? Which earlier propositions about divisibility are used? How? Where
is the assumption that p is prime used?)
One consequence:
Z
Lemma 0.21. If xand y are in pZ with p prime and xy = 0 mod p then
either x = 0 mod p or y = 0 mod p.

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