A rational number is given. Prove that there exists a sequence of rational numbers with the following properties:
a. ;
b. for every , either or ;
c. is an integer for some .
(This problem was suggested by Gabriel Carroll.)
A rational number is given. Prove that there exists a sequence of rational numbers with the following properties:
a. ;
b. for every , either or ;
c. is an integer for some .
(This problem was suggested by Gabriel Carroll.)
Let be written in lowest terms as , and write , where is odd. Let be the set of residue classes modulo , where arithmetic on elements of is understood to be done modulo . For any positive integer and any , say that is attainable at if there exists a sequence such that
* ;
* or for each ;
* is an integer in the residue class .
Say that a subset is attainable at if every element of is attainable at .
Lemma 1. There exists a nonempty set attainable at some .
Proof. Taking for all , we get , in lowest terms, hence the residue class of is attainable at .
Lemma 2. If the nonempty subset is attainable at , and is not all of , then there exist another subset and , with attainable at , and containing more elements than .
Proof. Choose such that , and put .
For each , the residue class is attainable at . Indeed, if attain at , then just extend the sequence by defining for each , and we have from which the assertion follows.
Also, the residue class is attainable at . Indeed, take the sequence attaining at , then define for each except for , in which case we put . Then we have , from which the assertion follows.
So the two sets of residues
are both attainable at . Also, has the same number of elements as , since is relatively prime to .
There must be some such that : Otherwise, starting from any element of and applying induction, we could show that every element of must be in ; but since has the same number of elements as , which by assumption is a proper subset of , this is impossible. Hence, contains some element not in . So their union , which again is attainable at , contains strictly more elements than , and so contains more elements than . This completes the proof.
Now, using Lemma 1 and Lemma 2, we can successively construct nonempty subsets having progressively more elements, each attainable at some respectively. This process cannot continue forever, since each is contained in the finite set . Therefore, it must eventually stop, which happens when some is all of . In particular, the residue class is attainable at . This means that we can construct with an integer. Then just take for each , and we have an infinite sequence satisfying the conditions of the problem.
Suppose that is given, where . Let be the largest prime divisor of the denominator of , and write
where and . We show that we can reach a value , , whose denominator has at most factors of and no larger prime divisors. Using this successively, we can decrease the largest prime divisor of the denominator until no factors are left.
If , we may take with . Therefore, we will now assume that .
Our procedure for constructing will be to take for and
We consider of the form , where all prime factors of are less than . Then
Since the denominator of this expression has exactly factors of and no larger prime divisors, it suffices to show that we can choose such that the numerator is divisible by . Mod , we have so we want
Since , , and , this condition has a unique solution , . We may now take where is large enough so that . This value of clearly has no prime factors greater than or equal to .