The equation has as a solution for every non-negative integer . Determine all non-negative integer solutions of this equation for and .
Solution
We first note that, independently of the value of , implies and vice versa. Furthermore, also independently of the value of , there can be no solution for either or , since certainly holds in either of these cases. In the following, we therefore limit our discussion to the case . In this case we can divide the given equation by , which yields the equivalent equation
We now turn our attention to the case .
If , the equation yields , which is true for , yielding the solution . If , is even, and and therefore must be odd. If , we have , and we see that is another solution. We now wish to show that there are no others.
For Wilson's theorem yields , which means that this expression cannot be a power of . For we obtain , which again yields a contradiction. Finally, for we note that , which implies . Since we obviously also have in this case, it follows that , which once more yields a contradiction.
The only case left to check is , but this yields the equation , which cannot hold because of , and we see that the only two non-trivial solutions in this case are and .
Now, let us consider the case . We will show that there are no non-trivial solutions in this case.
For the equation reduces to , which obviously has no integer solution. For , we have , and therefore , which implies . yields for the equation, which again has no integer solution. We therefore have only the case left to consider.
If , the fact that is even yields , which is a contradiction. For , the equation cannot have a solution because certainly holds. The only case left is therefore , but this case does not yield a solution either, since contradicts
(which is true because it is equivalent to ).
We see that there is no non-trivial solution for , as claimed.