Let be the set of rational numbers of the form
where run through the positive integers. Show that contains infinitely many primes.
Solution
Clearly, is closed under multiplication and division: if and are members of , so are and .
If is a positive integer, and is a prime factor of , then . To prove this, notice that , so is a quadratic residue modulo . By quadratic reciprocity, is a quadratic residue modulo , so . Notice also that contains , for .
We now show by induction that contains all primes congruent to . Since there are infinitely many such, the conclusion follows. To begin, notice that and both are in : , and .
Consider now a prime , and assume that contains all primes . Since is a quadratic residue modulo , quadratic reciprocity shows that is a quadratic residue modulo , so there exists in such that for some positive integer . Notice that , to deduce that . If , then which is a member of . If , and is a prime factor of , then
is also a prime factor of , so or . In either case, is a member of , so is a member, for is closed under multiplication. Since , and is closed under division, it follows that is indeed a member of . This completes the proof.