Let be an arbitrary integer. Prove that the equation
has infinitely many integer solutions.
(Otgonbayar Uuye)
Solution
Let and . Then the equation becomes:
So,
Recall that and are roots of the quadratic equation .
The discriminant is:
For and to be integers, must be a perfect square.
Let for some integer .
So,
This is a quadratic in for each integer .
For each integer , the equation
has discriminant in :
For sufficiently large , this is positive, so there are integer solutions for for infinitely many .
Alternatively, fix to be any integer, then is also integer, and and are roots of .
The roots are
So must be a perfect square.
But
So for each such that is a perfect square, we get integer solutions.
But for each , let be such that for some integer .
This is a quadratic in :
For each integer , this quadratic has integer solutions for for infinitely many .
Therefore, there are infinitely many integer solutions to the given equation for any integer .