The infinite sequence of positive integers satisfies: for any positive integers , divides , and for any positive integer , . Prove that there exists a polynomial such that for any positive integer , .
Solution
First, for any , let , and take a positive integer such that . Consider that divides and divides , from which we obtain that and have the same remainder upon division by , that is, divides .
By Lagrange interpolation, there exists a polynomial with rational coefficients of degree at most 100 such that for , we have . We now prove that .
Let be a positive integer such that is a polynomial with integer coefficients. Consider the function defined on the set of integers by ; then takes the value at through , and, by what was stated in the first paragraph together with the fact that is a polynomial with integer coefficients, satisfies . Moreover, since is a polynomial of degree at most 100, from we know there exists a constant such that .
For any positive integer , compare and , where . Since , from we get that must be a multiple of ; the pairwise common factors of these numbers are at most 100, so their least common multiple is , and must be a multiple of their least common multiple. When is sufficiently large, we have , and at this point we conclude .
For any integer , for any sufficiently large we have , and hence , which completes the proof!