Let be a non-empty set of positive integers, let be the greatest common divisor of , and let . Prove that there exists a bijection such that is a member of for all integers .
Amer. Math. Monthly
Solution
Reduce the problem to the case where is finite, by considering an element of , representing each residue class in by some member of , and collecting all these representatives to form a finite subset of whose greatest common divisor is again .
Assume henceforth finite and induct on the cardinality of . The base case being clear, let , fix a member of , notice that is non-empty since , and let be the greatest common divisor of . Clearly, is the greatest common divisor of and , and is integral. By the induction hypothesis, there exists a bijection such that is a member of for all integers .
It is easily seen that every multiple of can uniquely be written in the form
where and are both integral and .
Assign every integer an integer in by writing , where and are both integral and , and letting
This defines a function .
Since every member of can be written in the form , and is surjective, so is .
Uniqueness in and injectivity of imply injectivity of , so is bijective.
Finally, the fact that is a member of for all integers follows from the corresponding condition for . Verifications are routine and hence omitted.