Does there exist a sequence of positive integers such that and are coprime if and only if the indices and are one unit apart?
, 2015
Solution
The answer is in the affirmative. The idea is to consider a sequence of pairwise distinct primes , cover the positive integers by a sequence of finite non-empty sets such that and are disjoint if and only if and are one unit apart, and set , . For instance, we may take
, where the set in the middle is understood to be empty for . It is readily checked that and are disjoint for every index , and, if the indices and are at least two units apart, then and both contain , where if and have opposite parities, and otherwise. This ends the proof.
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