Find all positive integers for which both and are cubes of positive integers.
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
We need to find all positive integers for which there exist positive integers so that and . Adding these equations gives
Let and , then and we see that is divisible by if and only if is divisible by .
As , there exist positive integers and such that and . The above equations translate into
As we get , hence and so . On the other hand, the AM-GM inequality gives , which translates into , i.e. , the last inequality because .
The factors of are . Using we see that we must have and . This leads to and from which we obtain the quadratic equation . The two solutions are and . As we have and so . Therefore, .
Solution 2
We need to find all positive integers for which there exist positive integers so that and . From and we obtain . This implies that . Because and we can only have or . If , we obtain which implies , but this is not the cube of an integer. With we find and , hence . Therefore, is the only solution and .