Find all pairs of primes and , such that and are perfect squares.
Solution
Let and for some positive integers and . Subtracting the equations we get . Since is a prime and we have the following possibilities:
1. and . From the first equation we get . Plugging this into the second equation we see that . This implies that is odd, so we may write for some positive integer . Now, and . Since is a prime, we conclude that . Thus, and , which are indeed prime.
2. and . From the first equation we get . Plugging this into the second equation we see that . The initial equality then implies . Since is a prime we have . Thus, and , which are indeed prime.
3. and . Since and are positive integers and , we get and , which is a contradiction since it immediately follows that .
The two solutions are and .
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.