Problem:
Let be an integer. Three complex numbers have the property that their sum is and the sum of their th powers is also . Prove that two of the three numbers have the same absolute value.
Solution
Solution:
Given that
let
Then , , and are the roots of the polynomial
If , then , , and are the three cube roots of and thus all have the same absolute value; otherwise we can normalize, dividing , , and by a square root of , so that . Now we have
Define for nonnegative integers (here we make the convention that ). It is not hard to compute that , , , and, for ,
This recursion allows us to think of each as a polynomial (with integer coefficients) in . Our plan will be to prove that, for , these polynomials have only real roots. Then, given that , we can deduce that is a real polynomial and therefore either has all real roots (which is impossible, since the sum of the 2nd powers of the roots is ) or has a pair of complex conjugate roots which have the same absolute value.
The leading term of follows a pattern which is not difficult to verify by induction. It is:
In particular, for , the leading coefficients of and have the same sign, and the degree of is one more than the degree of . We will prove that the roots of alternate with the roots of on the number line, with no two coinciding, beginning and ending with a root of . When is constant (that is, for , or ) this statement is trivial, and we will use it as the base of an induction. For all other , the induction hypothesis tells us there is exactly one root of between each pair of roots of , and it suffices to prove the following statement:
For brevity we will prove this only when is positive and is also positive; the proof readily generalizes when one or both are negative. (By the induction hypothesis , and if then (1) gives for .) Assume for contradiction that . Using (1) repeatedly, we get
Note that , , are all positive. Then, using the reverse recursion
we get that for all . Since , this is a contradiction.