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SAUDI ARABIAN IMO Booklet, 2023

Number theory Difficulty 7.6 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Saudi Arabia

Prove that it is possible to pick 20 numbers among 1,2,…,100001, 2, \ldots, 10000 such that the members of any non-empty subset of these 20 numbers has a sum which is not an nn-th power of some number (for any n>1n > 1).

Solution

Note that 1919, 2323 are primes and 19⋅23=43719 \cdot 23 = 437. Now denote S={1,2,3,…,20}S = \{1, 2, 3, \ldots, 20\} then take T={437a∣a∈S}⊂{1,2,…,104}T = \{437a \mid a \in S\} \subset \{1, 2, \ldots, 10^4\}. So ∣T∣=∣S∣=20|T| = |S| = 20. Note that 1+2+⋯+20=210<4371 + 2 + \dots + 20 = 210 < 437.

Suppose that there exist kk numbers in TT, denote by 437a1,437a2,…,437ak437a_1, 437a_2, \ldots, 437a_k such that their sum is a perfect power. Thus
437(a1+a2+⋯+ak)=an(∗) 437(a_1 + a_2 + \dots + a_k) = a^n \quad (*)
for some positive integer a,na, n and n≥2n \ge 2. Since 437∣an437 \mid a^n then 4372∣an437^2 \mid a^n which implies that
437∣a1+a2+⋯+ak, 437 \mid a_1 + a_2 + \dots + a_k,
this is contradiction since the sum of all numbers in SS is less than 437437. Thus, the above set satisfies the given condition. □\square

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