Let be an integer, and let be pairwise distinct positive integers not exceeding . Suppose that the sequence
forms an arithmetic progression. Prove that the terms of the sequence are equal.
Solution
Suppose that (1) is an arithmetic progression with nonzero difference. Let the difference be , where and are coprime.
We will show that too many denominators should be divisible by . To this end, for any and any prime divisor of , say that the index is -wrong, if . ( stands for the exponent of in the prime factorisation of .)
Claim 1. For any prime , all -wrong indices are congruent modulo . In other words, the -wrong indices (if they exist) are included in an arithmetic progression with difference .
Proof. Let . For the sake of contradiction, suppose that and are -wrong indices (i.e., none of and is divisible by ) such that . Then the least common denominator of and is not divisible by . But this is impossible because in their difference, , the numerator is coprime to , but divides the denominator .
Claim 2. has no prime divisors greater than .
Proof. Suppose that is a prime divisor of . Among the indices , at most are -wrong, so divides at least of . Since these denominators are distinct,
a contradiction.
Claim 3. For every , among the denominators , at least are divisible by .
Proof. By Claim 1, the -wrong, -wrong and -wrong indices can be covered by three arithmetic progressions with differences and . By a simple inclusion-exclusion, indices are not covered; by Claim 2, we have for every uncovered index .
Claim 4. and .
Proof. From the sequence (1), remove all fractions with . There remain at least fractions, and they cannot exceed . So we have at least elements of the arithmetic progression (1) in the interval , hence the difference must be below .
The second inequality follows from .
Now we have everything to get the final contradiction. By Claim 3, we have for at least indices . By Claim 4, we have . Therefore,
which is a contradiction. Therefore, the difference must be zero, i.e., all terms of the sequence are equal.