, are real numbers. Find a necessary and sufficient condition for to have no solutions except .
Solution
If , then we have which obviously has infinitely many solutions with . So assume . Then we can write the equation as . If , we can assume . We cannot have , since , so . Write , , where is any integer, is a non-negative integer, and . So , where is a non-negative integer and .
We note first that . So if there are solutions with and , then must belong to the open interval .
Conversely, by taking and suitable it is clear that can take any value in . Thus a necessary and sufficient condition for solutions with is or .
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