Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /1100 of 1394

, 2020

Number theory Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
Let AA be a set of integers such that for each integer mm, there exists an integer aAa \in A and positive integer nn such that anm(mod100)a^{n} \equiv m \pmod{100}. What is the smallest possible value of A|A|?

Solution

Solution:
Work in R=Z/100ZZ/4Z×Z/25ZR = \mathbb{Z} / 100 \mathbb{Z} \cong \mathbb{Z} / 4 \mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z} / 25 \mathbb{Z}.
Call an element rRr \in R type (s,t)(s, t) if s=ν2(r)2s = \nu_{2}(r) \leq 2 and t=ν5(r)2t = \nu_{5}(r) \leq 2. Also, define an element rRr \in R to be coprime if it is of type (0,0)(0,0), powerful if it is of types (0,2)(0,2), (2,0)(2,0), or (2,2)(2,2), and marginal otherwise.

Then, note that if rRr \in R is marginal, then any power of rr is powerful. Therefore all marginal elements must be in AA.

We claim that all powerful elements are the cube of some marginal element. To show this, take a powerful element rr. In modulo 4 or 25, if rr is a unit, then since 3 is coprime to both the sizes of (Z/4Z)×(\mathbb{Z} / 4 \mathbb{Z})^{\times} and (Z/25Z)×(\mathbb{Z} / 25 \mathbb{Z})^{\times}, it is the cube of some element. Otherwise, if rr is zero then it is the cube of 2 or 5, respectively (since this case happens at least once this means that the constructed cube root is marginal).

We now claim that 4 additional elements are needed to generate the coprime elements. To see this, note that R×Z/2Z×Z/20ZR^{\times} \cong \mathbb{Z} / 2 \mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z} / 20 \mathbb{Z} since there are primitive roots mod 4\bmod\ 4 and 25. Under this isomorphism, one can show that (1,1)(1,1), (1,2)(1,2), (1,4)(1,4), and (0,1)(0,1) generate anything, and that no element in R×R^{\times} has more than one of these as a multiple.

To wrap up, note that there are 100(20+1)(2+1)=37100 - (20 + 1)(2 + 1) = 37 marginal elements, so 41 elements are needed in total.

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