Olympiad Maths Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it Ukraine

Find all natural numbers aa and bb, for which the number 2a!+2b!2^{a!} + 2^{b!} is a cube of a natural number.
*Recall that for a natural number nn, n!=123nn! = 1 \cdot 2 \cdot 3 \cdot \ldots \cdot n.*

(Arseniy Nicolaev)

Solution

It is clear that if n3n \ge 3, n!n! is divisible by 33, that is n!=3kn! = 3k, for some natural number kk. But then 2n!=23k=8k1(mod7)2^{n!} = 2^{3k} = 8^k \equiv 1 \pmod{7}. It's easy to see that the cubes of integer numbers are equal to 00 or ±1\pm 1 modulo 77. Without loss of generality, we may assume that aba \ge b.

Case 1. a3a \ge 3. If b3b \ge 3, then 2a!+2b!2(mod7)2^{a!} + 2^{b!} \equiv 2 \pmod{7} is not a cube of an integer number. If b=2b=2, then 2a!+2b!1+45(mod7)2^{a!} + 2^{b!} \equiv 1+4 \equiv 5 \pmod{7} is not a cube of an integer number. If b=1b=1, then 2a!+2b!1+23(mod7)2^{a!} + 2^{b!} \equiv 1+2 \equiv 3 \pmod{7} is not a cube of an integer number.

Case 2. 2ab2 \ge a \ge b, here we have three cases, from which we simply find a single answer in a simple overview.

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