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Team Selection Test for IMO, 2019

Number theory Difficulty 8.1 Shortlist Prove it Turkey

Let pp be an odd prime number, m>1m > 1 and nn be positive integers such that mpn−1mn−1\frac{m^{pn} - 1}{m^n - 1} is a prime number. Show that
pn∣(p−1)n+1. pn \mid (p-1)^n + 1.

Solution

We first show that nn is a power of pp. Let n=pktn = p^k t where k≥0k \ge 0 and t≥1t \ge 1 are integers and p∤tp \nmid t. Let M=mpkM = m^{p^k}. By the assumption in the problem Mpt−1=(Mt−1)qM^{p t}-1 = (M^t-1)q for some prime number qq. Recall that (Ma−1,Mb−1)=M(a,b)−1(M^a-1, M^b-1) = M^{(a,b)} - 1 for all positive integers aa and bb, and therefore we get (Mp−1,Mt−1)=M−1(M^p-1, M^t-1) = M-1. Since both Mp−1M^p-1 and Mt−1M^t-1 divide Mpt−1M^{pt}-1 we see that (Mp−1)(Mt−1)M−1\frac{(M^p-1)(M^t-1)}{M-1} divides Mpt−1M^{pt}-1.
In other words, Mp−1M−1\frac{M^p-1}{M-1} divides Mpt−1Mt−1=q\frac{M^{pt}-1}{M^t-1} = q. Then, Mp−1M−1\frac{M^p-1}{M-1} is either 11 or qq. Clearly it is not 11, and hence it is qq so we get t=1t=1. Now since pp is an odd prime number, the statement pk+1∣(p−1)pk+1p^{k+1}|(p-1)^{p^k}+1 readily follows from the binomial expansion of (p−1)pk(p-1)^{p^k}.

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