THE APPLICATION EXERCISES AND THE SOLUTION

***************
1) Let be a positive integer. Find all positive integers such that .

Solution. otherwise . If , we should have

, i.e., for some .

2) Let be two positive integers and let be an odd prime number such that
Prove that

Solution. By Fermat, , so

3) Show that the only positive integer value of for which is a perfect cube for all
positive integers is

Solution. If , is not a power of (because it is and either or modulo ).

Choose some odd prime . Now, take some with odd and notice that
but can be anything we want modulo .

4) Let be an integer. Show that there exists infinitely many positive integers such that

Solution. If is not a power of , choose an odd prime and take . Then, for
each not divisible by , we have .
Also, if (and, thereby, ), then so the sum in question is divisible by
.
If is a power of , then take an odd prime divisor of and repeat the above argument
with instead of (the last term is, obviously, not a problem)

5) Show that has a prime divisor which isn't a divisor of

Solution. False as stated. , .

6) Let be a prime number, and and positive integers. Prove that if

then

Solution. , so assume that is odd. Then , so it cannot be a

1
square. But .

7) Find all positive integers for which there exist positive integers and such that
and

Solution. must be odd since the sum of 2 squares is divisible by only if both squares are. If
, then is odd and , which means that
, so and . Now it is just cases.
a) . Then for all , and so

which gives an immediate contradiction.

b) . Then (or vice versa) and we get , meaning
whence , so giving the only solution .

8) Let be positive integers such that is odd and is a prime. Prove that if
then is a power of

Solution. , so . Now divide and by the highest power of

they contain (it has to be the same). This may change and but not in our condition. Then
use the LTE to get , so . If , we get

, so and , which is less than

for odd but the case is impossible.

9) Let be a prime number. Solve the equation in the set of positive integers.

Solution. By Fermat, .
a) is odd. Then , so and, if , then
. Thus, in this case and , which is never an
integer (because it is strictly between and ).
b) . Then but, unless , either or is not a power of .
So, the only solution is .

10) Find all solutions of the equation

in positive integers.

Solution. must be or prime (otherwise any nontrivial divisor of will divide both

2
and . Now, , is a solution, is not, so it suffices to consider the case when
is an odd prime.
If is odd, then if . is not a solution, so
we can consider only even .
Then or

. But the left hand side is at least (just count evens

up to ), so , which is at least for . It remains to note that
for .
Now comes the remaining finite trial and error part:
is good
is bad
gives which is far too large.
gives , which is too large too
gives some big as well.

11) For some positive integer the number is a perfect power of a prime. Prove that
is a prime.

Solution. Assume , . Then with . Thus, by LTE,

and but for , one
has , which gives a contradiction.

12) Let be three positive integers with and Show that if prime divisors of
the numbers and be the same, then is a perfect power of

Solution. I failed to find a way to use the LTE here. The way I solved it is as follows. Let
. Then and have the same prime divisors (this uses the proof of
the principle I mentioned rather than the statement itself: when you repeat going from to
, you stop when you get two equal numbers).
But then each prime dividing has to divide whence is a power of . If
were even, the remainder of the LHS modulo would be , so is odd. Then and
must be a power of 2 too.

13) Find the highest degree of for which divides the number

3
Solution. Using and , we get and
. Since when
, the answer is .

14) Let be a prime number and be a positive integer. Show that if for some positive

integers we have then

Solution. Since , we must have . Now, factoring out

and writing , , we get .
Assume that is odd. Take any prime divisor and let . If is odd, we
get whence and , giving an immediate contradiction. If
, we get , so and , i.e., , which immediately
implies .

If , we just notice that if , so is

the only possibility unless , which is easy to outrule.

15) Find all positive integers such that where is a prime.

Solution. The case is easily done ( has remainder , so is the

only possibility), so assume that is odd. Then and, by LTE, . But
unless , , which gives the second solution.

16) Let be a square-free number. Show that there does not exist positive integers and such
that

Solution. False as stated: for all large enough .

17) Let and be two positive real numbers such that for each positive integer the number
is a positive integer. Show that and are both positive integers.

and 18) Let and be two positive rational numbers such that for infinitely many positive
integers the number is a positive integer. Show that and are both positive

4
integers.

Solution. They are very much alike, so I'll combine the solutions.

In 17, start with the observation that and are rational, so .

Now we are in the conditions of 18. Write where is the least common
denominator of . If , take any prime divisor of . Then for infinitely many
and cannot divide or (otherwise it would divide them both and we could reduce the
fractions). Led be the least power such that . Then all those 's are for some
integer and we get (just not to
consider separately). But grows only logarithmically in , so we get a contradiction.

19) Does there exist a positive integer such that has exactly prime divisors and
divides

Solution. Note that by LTE. Thus, if has 1999 distinct prime divisors
, will work. Note that each divisor of is also a
divisor of , so the set of prime divisors either grows without bound or saturates to
some finite set . In the latter case, we have
where is the least integer such that
. Thus, where is the product of all primes in , which is absurd.

20) Suppose that and are non-negative integers, and is a prime number. Prove
that

 ;

 is the smallest positive integer satisfying the congruence equation

.

Solution. by LTE and .

Furthermore, but not , so if , we have (powers of have

5
only divisors that are powers of 2 themselves). If , then
, so .

21) Let be a prime. Find the maximum value of positive integer such that

Solution. Let . Then, since ,

, and , we get

22) Find all positive integers which are greater than and

Solution. Let be the least prime divisor of . Let be the least positive integer for which
. Then and , so any prime divisor of divides and is less than . Thus,
not to run into a contradiction, we must have . Now, if is odd, we have
, so , which is impossible. Thus
, is even, is odd and whence
, which is possible only if , .
Put with odd and rewrite the condition as . Let be the least prime
divisor of (now, surely, odd). Let be the least positive integer such that . Then
and whence must be (or has a smaller prime divisor), so ,
which is impossible. Thus .

23) Let be distinct real numbers such that the numbers

Are all integers. Prove that are both integers.

Solution. If , then is either an integer or a half-integer, the latter case being

impossible because then is not an integer. Otherwise, and are integers by
problem 17, so is rational, so are rational but all rational square roots
of integers are integer.

24) Find all quadruples of positive integers such that is a prime number,
and

6
Solution. Assume is odd. Let . Then , so
, implying and
, which is impossible for .
Thus . If is odd, we get so , which is outruled. Thus,
is even and . If , we get the usual .
Otherwise , so and we can finish just as we started.

25) Let be positive integers and be an odd number, let be a positive integer. If

then show that

Solution. Let be the set of all prime divisors of . For , let be the least integer such
that . We have , and . Now note that

and that for all . Thus,

26) Let be a prime number, , and integers such that and .

Prove that or .

Solution. If , then . Otherwise LTE applies and .

27) Let and be positive integers. Prove that for each odd positive integer there are
infinitely many primes such that implies

Solution. Let be any prime divisor of . If , we get

(using, as before, that the minimal satisfying divides both and ) and
. Thus we just need to show that there are infinitely many
primes satisfying the condition for all prime divisors of . If one knows
Dirichlet, it is simple: just consider for all primes dividing . If not, I'm
stuck for now.

28) Determine all integers such that

is an integer.

7
Solution. Let be a prime divisor on , , . We have . We
also know that by Fermat. Thus and, by LTE . Let be
the least positive integer such that . Then . If is the least prime
divisor of , we conclude that (because consists of primes larger than ) and ,
. Now, if is the second smallest prime divisor in , then can be only (the only factor
in that can occur in ). But has no prime divisors greater than and we are
stuck in our attempt to acsend. Thus, the answer is or .

29) Find all positive integers such that is an integer.

Solution. Let . As before, put . Since and

by Fermat, we get . Let be the least positive integer such

that . Then divides both and and is an odd multiple of .

But the power of in is at least while

, so choosing so that is minimal, we'll get a
contradiction.

30) Find all primes such that is an integer.

Solution. Assume . If by Fermat, so if , then

. In particular, if , then . If and , then by
Fermat, so the least such that must divide both and , i.e., , so
again. Now, either , or , so is the only other
solution.

31) For some natural number let be the greatest natural nubmer for which is
divisible by . Also let be the greatest natural number such that . Prove that .

Solution. If is odd, and there is nothing to prove. If is even,

. But, clearly, .

32) Find all surjective functions such that for every and every prime

8
the number is divisible by if and only if is divisible by

Solution. We start with the (well-known?) observation that every subset of positive integers
that is closed under addition is an eventual arithmetic progression. More precisely, there exists
(which actually is just the greatest common divisor of the elements of ) and such that
for we have .
Now, for prime , let . Let be the corresponding difference. Thus
if is large. Now take any and take a huge divisible by (so ).
Then , so the equivalence holds without the
requirement that is large too.
The next step is to show that the remainder of modulo determines the remainder of
modulo and vice versa. Let's take . For every there exists the unique
such that determined by . But then determining
uniquely. Conversely, let so that (here is where we
use surjectivity). Then once we know , we know such that
whence we know that . This one-to one
correspondence between remainders implies that and that
.
In particular, and if for all .
Now take a huge odd prime and note that we can have only if all up to are
actually . Since is arbitrarily large, for all .

33) Determine all sets of non-negative integers and which satisfy the equation

Solution. This is just a casework:

If , we get , but and are the only two powers of differing by , so
, .
If , then giving , in the same way.
If , then is even ( cannot be ) whence is even ( cannot be ),
so, letting , we get . Thus, we must have
and . But then by the LTE, so
if . gives nothing, gives , and gives
nothing.

34) Find all positive integer solutions of equation .

9
Solution. so by Fermat. Removing the highest possible power of from , we
get , so
but the left hand side is much larger than the right hand one if
.
35) Let be an odd positive integer. Prove that divides .

Solution. , so for every , we have

which is just what we need in terms of prime divisors.

36) Find all positive integers such that is divisible by .

Solution. , so . work, doesn't.

37) Let be a prime and be positive integers such that Prove that if
and then

Solution. LTE, odd prime case.

38) Let be two integers, which have the following property: there exists an integer
such that divides Prove that also divides

Solution. If some prime , then and , which is a

restatement of what we need in terms of prime divisors.

39) Find all positive integers such that is a positive integer.

Solution. must be odd (otherwise the numerator is ). Then

giving as the only solution.

40) Let be positive integers such that and . Prove that .

10
Solution. LTE, even prime case (wrong without the assumption , by the way).

11