Determine all injective functions of the set of positive integers into itself satisfying the following condition: If is a finite set of positive integers such that is an integer, then is also an integer.
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Solution
We shall prove that the identity is the unique function satisfying the conditions in the statement. Clearly, , so if , by injectivity. We will use the following well-known result.
Egyptian fractions theorem. For every positive rational and positive integer , there exists a finite set of integers greater than such that .
Now, consider an integer and use the Egyptian fractions theorem to write
get thereby
Both are positive integers, so
is an integer. Since , it follows that . In particular, is strictly increasing, so .
Finally, proceed by induction on to prove that . To show that , simply notice that is a positive integer not exceeding 1. To complete the proof, let for some and write
to conclude that .
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