Determine all couples of coprime numbers satisfying:
Solution
Consider the equation modulo , which reduces to . Since and are coprime ( clearly), we must have .
Consider now the equation modulo . Then the equation becomes , and since , . Let for some integer . Then the congruence becomes
and we deduce that and hence .
We will now that , which will mean that . From the equation we get and hence , and hence . Hence , or
But if , then and (since ). We obtain the desired contradiction.
Now substituting into the original equation we obtain
The only integer solution is . Hence the only possible solution is , which gives . It is easy to check that this gives a solution to the equation.
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