Find all pairs of positive integers such that is a multiple of and is a multiple of . Note: An integer is said to be a multiple of an integer if there is an integer such that .
Solutions — 3
Solution 1
By inspection, we see that the pairs with are solutions, and so too are the pairs . We will see that these are the only solutions.
- Case 1. Consider the case . Since is a multiple of , it follows that . This yields the second set of solutions described above.
- Case 2. This leaves the case . Since the positive integer is a multiple of , there is a positive integer such that .
Note that modulo . So we have
If , then we must have , hence, . So there is a positive integer such that and . Now yields . This implies that , which is impossible.
If , then . So there's equality throughout, implying . This yields the first set of solutions described above.
Therefore, the solutions described above are the only solutions.
Solution 2
We will start by showing that there are positive integers such that and . Let so that and for some coprime and . Then, is equivalent to , which is equivalent to . Since and are coprime, this implies . Hence, for some , giving and as required.
Now, it remains to find all positive integers satisfying
That is, . Assuming that this congruence holds, it follows that . Then, either or or .
- If then .
- If , then . Hence, each of these inequalities must in fact be an equality. This implies that , which implies that .
- If , then . Hence, each of these inequalities must in fact be an equality. This implies that , which implies that .
Hence the only solutions are the pairs such that or . These pairs can be checked to satisfy the given conditions.
Solution 3
All answers are and where is any positive integer. They all clearly work.
To show that these are all solutions, note that we can easily eliminate the case or . Thus, assume that and . By the second divisibility, we see that . However, and is relatively prime to . This implies that , which implies .
The last relation implies that , since the right-hand side are positive. However, due to the first divisibility,
Combining these two inequalities, we get that
This implies . However, gives . This forces
Extracting by hand yields no additional solution.