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Algebra Difficulty 7.5 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it United States

Problem:
Find (with proof) all monic polynomials f(x)f(x) with integer coefficients that satisfy the following two conditions.
1. f(0)=2004f(0)=2004.
2. If xx is irrational, then f(x)f(x) is also irrational.

(Notes: A polynomial is monic if its highest degree term has coefficient 1. Thus, f(x)=x45x34x+7f(x)=x^{4}-5 x^{3}-4 x+7 is an example of a monic polynomial with integer coefficients.
A number xx is rational if it can be written as a fraction of two integers. A number xx is irrational if it is a real number which cannot be written as a fraction of two integers. For example, 2/52 / 5 and 9-9 are rational, while 2\sqrt{2} and π\pi are well known to be irrational.)

Solution

Solution:
The polynomial x+2004x+2004 certainly meets the two conditions. In fact, this is the only one. We will prove this using three ingredients: the infinitude of primes, the Rational Roots Theorem for polynomials, and the approximation principle that xnx^{n} dominates any polynomial of lower degree, for large enough xx.

Note that the only monic constant polynomial is f(x)=1f(x)=1, which fails Condition 1; and that the only monic degree 1 polynomial satisfying Condition 1 is f(x)=x+2004f(x)=x+2004. Thus, we need to eliminate all polynomials of degree 2 or more. To this end, it is sufficient to show that, given any monic polynomial f(x)f(x) with integer coefficients of degree 2 or more, there exists an integer aa such that f(x)+a=0f(x)+a=0 has an irrational solution xx (for then f(x)=af(x)=-a is rational for an irrational number xx).

Let f(x)=xn+cn1xn1++c1x+c0f(x)=x^{n}+c_{n-1} x^{n-1}+\cdots+c_{1} x+c_{0} be a polynomial with integer coefficients, with n2n \geq 2. It may be the case that f(x)f(x) has no real roots, for example, if nn is even and the graph of y=f(x)y=f(x) lies above the xx-axis. But certainly, if aa is a sufficiently large negative integer, we can guarantee that f(x)+a=0f(x)+a=0 will have at least one real solution. In fact, by further making aa a larger negative number, we can ensure that, say, the largest of the solutions of f(x)+a=0f(x)+a=0 has absolute value bigger than 1: x>1|x|>1.

Moreover, regardless of how large a negative number aa needs to be, we can choose aa so that c0+a=pc_{0}+a=-p where pp is prime. This is because there are infinitely many prime numbers. Now we can apply the Rational Roots Theorem, according to which all rational solutions rs\frac{r}{s} of the monic integer coefficient polynomial f(x)+af(x)+a must satisfy: ss divides the leading coefficient of f(x)f(x) and rr divides the last (free term) of f(x)f(x); in other words, ss divides 1 and rr divides pp. Since pp is prime, this gives only four possible rational solutions: x=±1,±px= \pm 1, \pm p. Since we have ensured that x>1|x|>1, we are left with x=±px= \pm p.

Let g(x)=f(x)+ag(x)=f(x)+a. From the well known inequalities of absolute values y+zyz|y+z| \geq |y|-|z| and y+zy+z|y+z| \leq |y|+|z|, we obtain:
g(x)=xn+cn1xn1++c1xpxncn1xn1++c1xp |g(x)|=\left|x^{n}+c_{n-1} x^{n-1}+\ldots+c_{1} x-p\right| \geq \left|x^{n}\right|-\left|c_{n-1} x^{n-1}+\ldots+c_{1} x-p\right|
and as long as x>1|x|>1 and n2n \geq 2:
cn1xn1++c1xpcn1xn1++c1x+p(cn1++c1)xn1+pn1 \begin{aligned} \left|c_{n-1} x^{n-1}+\cdots+c_{1} x-p\right| & \leq \left|c_{n-1}\right||x|^{n-1}+\cdots+\left|c_{1}\right||x|+p \\ & \leq \left(\left|c_{n-1}\right|+\cdots+\left|c_{1}\right|\right)|x|^{n-1}+p^{n-1} \end{aligned}
If we let S=cn1++c1S=\left|c_{n-1}\right|+\cdots+\left|c_{1}\right|, we can put everything together:
g(±p)pn(S+1)pn1=pn1(p(S+1)) |g( \pm p)| \geq p^{n}-(S+1) p^{n-1}=p^{n-1}(p-(S+1))
Since SS is fixed, we can choose the prime pp large enough so that p>S+1p>S+1, and hence the quantity p(S+1)p-(S+1) is positive. Therefore, g(±p)0g( \pm p) \neq 0.

Thus g(x)g(x) has a real zero xx, which cannot be rational since the only possibilities for rational zeros ±p\pm p fail to be zeros by the above. We conclude that xx is an irrational root of g(x)g(x), whereas f(x)=af(x)=-a is an integer, hence rational. This contradicts Condition 2, and eliminates all polynomials of degree 2 or more.

Finally, we are left with only one possible solution: f(x)=x+2004f(x)=x+2004.

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