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Number theory Difficulty 5.8 AIME, harder Prove it Iran

Find all coprime natural numbers aa and bb for which b.a=abb.a = \frac{a}{b} (Note that if a=92a = 92 and b=13b = 13, then b.a=13.92b.a = 13.92).

Solution

Let kk be the number of digits of aa. Therefore, 10k1a<10k10^{k-1} \le a < 10^k. We have ab=b.a=b+a10k\frac{a}{b} = b.a = b + \frac{a}{10^k} and consequently ab2b=a10k\frac{a-b^2}{b} = \frac{a}{10^k}. Since (a,b)=1(a,b) = 1, (ab2,b)=1(a-b^2,b) = 1; therefore, ab2b\frac{a-b^2}{b} is the irreducible form of a10k\frac{a}{10^k}. Thus, for some natural number ss, sb=10ksb = 10^k and s(ab2)=as(a-b^2) = a.

Now, ab2aa-b^2|a and (ab2,a)=1(a-b^2,a) = 1. Hence, ab2=±1a-b^2 = \pm 1, but ab2b=a10k>0\frac{a-b^2}{b} = \frac{a}{10^k} > 0, so ab2=1a-b^2 = 1. Therefore, a=b2+1a = b^2+1 and 1b=a10k\frac{1}{b} = \frac{a}{10^k}.

Since a10k1a \ge 10^{k-1}, we have 1b=a10k110\frac{1}{b} = \frac{a}{10^k} \ge \frac{1}{10} which implies b10b \le 10. On the other hand, ab=b(b2+1)=10kab = b(b^2+1) = 10^k, so prime factors of bb and b2+1b^2+1 are only 2 or 5. Since b10b \le 10, we have b{1,2,4,5,8,10}b \in \{1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10\}. A simple calculation shows that only for b=2b = 2, b(b2+1)b(b^2+1) is a power of 10. For this case, a=5a = 5 and k=1k = 1. Therefore, 52=2.5\frac{5}{2} = 2.5, this is the only solution.

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