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Algebra Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it Romania

Determine all injective functions f:ZZf: \mathbb{Z} \to \mathbb{Z} that satisfy
f(x)f(y)xy, |f(x) - f(y)| \le |x - y|,
for all x,yZx, y \in \mathbb{Z}.

Solution

The given relation yields f(x+1)f(x)1|f(x+1) - f(x)| \le 1, so f(x+1)f(x){1,0,1}f(x+1)-f(x) \in \{-1, 0, 1\}. Because ff is one-to-one, we get f(x+1)f(x){1,1}f(x+1)-f(x) \in \{-1, 1\}, for all xx in Z\mathbb{Z}. We suppose WLOG that f(1)f(0)=1f(1)-f(0) = 1 (if ff verifies the hypothesis then f-f verifies it also). We have f(2)f(1)=±1f(2)-f(1) = \pm 1. If f(2)f(1)=1f(2)-f(1) = -1, then f(2)=f(0)f(2) = f(0), a contradiction, so f(2)=f(0)+2f(2) = f(0) + 2.
By easy induction it follows that f(n)=f(0)+nf(n) = f(0) + n, for any positive integer nn. Analogously we get f(n)=f(0)nf(-n) = f(0) - n, for any positive integer nn.

Thus the functions that verify the given condition are of the form f(x)=±x+kf(x) = \pm x + k, for any integer xx, where kk is an arbitrary integer. One easily verifies that all such functions are solutions to the problem.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.