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Second Round of the 73rd Czech and Slovak Mathematical Olympiad (January 16th, ), 2024

Number theory Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it Czech Republic

Find all the pairs of natural numbers (k,n)(k, n) such that there exist natural numbers a,ba, b satisfying:
gcd(a+k,b)=n⋅gcd(a,b). \text{gcd}(a + k, b) = n \cdot \text{gcd}(a, b).

Solution

We shall prove that every pair (k,n)(k, n) works.

First, if n=1n = 1, we can just take (a,b)=(k,k)(a, b) = (k, k), then
gcd(a+k,b)=gcd(2k,k)=k=gcd(k,k)=gcd(a,b). \text{gcd}(a + k, b) = \text{gcd}(2k, k) = k = \text{gcd}(k, k) = \text{gcd}(a, b).

Now, assume that n>1n > 1, then nk−k>0nk - k > 0 is a natural number and we can take (a,b)=((n−1)k,nk)(a, b) = ((n-1)k, nk). Then we clearly have:
gcd(a+k,b)=gcd((n−1)k+k,nk)=gcd(nk,nk)=nk, \text{gcd}(a + k, b) = \text{gcd}((n-1)k + k, nk) = \text{gcd}(nk, nk) = nk,
gcd(a,b)=gcd((n−1)k,nk)=k, \text{gcd}(a, b) = \text{gcd}((n-1)k, nk) = k,
so
gcd(a+k,b)=n⋅gcd(a,b). \text{gcd}(a + k, b) = n \cdot \text{gcd}(a, b).
Therefore, every pair (k,n)(k, n) works.

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