Suppose is a polynomial with integer coefficients satisfying: for every positive integer , is nonzero, and has at most 2011 prime factors that are not prime factors of . Prove that can be expressed as , where is an integer and is a nonnegative integer.
Solution
For such an as described in the problem, if the constant term of is 0, then we may consider , which also satisfies the conditions of the problem; therefore we may assume that the constant term of is nonzero, and it suffices to prove that in this case is a constant polynomial.
Let is a prime there exists a positive integer such that is a multiple of , but is not a multiple of . We claim that contains at most 2011 primes.
If not, then by contradiction, let be distinct primes in , and let positive integers respectively satisfy and .
By the Chinese Remainder Theorem, there exists a positive integer such that , ,
since . We know that . At the same time, by definition is coprime to , a contradiction. Therefore contains at most 2011 primes; denote .
Let , that is, is the nonzero constant term of , and is some polynomial with integer coefficients. Suppose is not a constant polynomial, then is nonzero. Now let . Then , and it is clear that is coprime to , and
Therefore has at least one prime factor that does not have, contradicting the definition of ; hence must be a constant polynomial. This completes the proof.