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Taiwan IMO Selection Camp, 2021

Combinatorics Difficulty 6.9 National Olympiad Prove it Taiwan

For each prime pp, there is a kingdom of pp-Landia consisting of pp islands numbered 1,2,…,p1, 2, \dots, p. Two distinct islands numbered nn and mm are connected by a bridge if and only if pp divides (n2−m+1)(m2−n+1)(n^2 - m + 1)(m^2 - n + 1). Prove that for infinitely many pp there are two islands in pp-Landia not connected by a chain of bridges.

Solution

View it as a directed graph with a directed edge mnmn iff n=m2+1n = m^2 + 1 in Zp\mathbb{Z}_p. Easy to see that out degree is at most one for every vertex. If a,ba, b are roots of x2−x+1x^2 - x + 1, then we can check that a,ba, b are distinct if p>3p > 3 (otherwise a=b=2−1a = b = 2^{-1} and 1=2−21 = 2^{-2} in Zp\mathbb{Z}_p). So there less than p−1p-1 edges, so pp-Landia is disconnected (as an undirected graph). It remains to show that there are infinitely many pp such that there are some xx such that p∣x2−x+1p \mid x^2 - x + 1. Towards contradiction, suppose p1,p2,…,pkp_1, p_2, \dots, p_k are the only primes such that x2−x+1≡0(modp)x^2 - x + 1 \equiv 0 \pmod p has solutions. Consider x=p1p2⋯pkx = p_1p_2 \cdots p_k and let pp be a prime factor of x2−x+1x^2 - x + 1, clearly x2−x+1≡0(modp)x^2 - x + 1 \equiv 0 \pmod p and x2−x+1≡1(modpi)x^2 - x + 1 \equiv 1 \pmod {p_i} for i=1,2,…,pki = 1, 2, \dots, p_k, contradict to the assumption.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from zh; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.