Determine all positive integers for which all prime factors of are at most 7.
Solution
We note that for all , so we are looking for all such that 3, 5 and 7 are the only divisors, or . The answers are , which we easily check with outcomes 1, 3, 7, , .
We compute , and , and these are the smallest positive exponents for which is congruent to 1. That means that if and only if , that if and only if and that if and only if .
If is odd, then it follows from what we said before that has no factors 3 or 5. We distinguish two cases. If and , the prime 7 is not a divisor either, while . So must have a prime divisor greater than 7, and these do not satisfy the conditions. The other option for odd is that . To satisfy the conditions, we must then have that . Thus, if we find the relation . However, this contradicts , because . So the only possibility is .
Now suppose with , and suppose that for all even with , the number has a prime factor greater than 7. Consider the factorisation . If is odd, then the first factor has a prime factor greater than 7 since . If is even, then the same is true based on the induction hypothesis since now . This completes the proof by induction.