AlgebraDifficulty 7.5National Olympiad, round 2Prove itUnited States
Problem: Find (with proof) all monic polynomials f(x) with integer coefficients that satisfy the following two conditions. 1. f(0)=2004. 2. If x is irrational, then f(x) is also irrational.
(Notes: A polynomial is monic if its highest degree term has coefficient 1. Thus, f(x)=x4−5x3−4x+7 is an example of a monic polynomial with integer coefficients. A number x is rational if it can be written as a fraction of two integers. A number x is irrational if it is a real number which cannot be written as a fraction of two integers. For example, 2/5 and −9 are rational, while 2 and π are well known to be irrational.)
Solution
Solution: The polynomial x+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 xn dominates any polynomial of lower degree, for large enough x.
Note that the only monic constant polynomial is f(x)=1, which fails Condition 1; and that the only monic degree 1 polynomial satisfying Condition 1 is f(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) with integer coefficients of degree 2 or more, there exists an integer a such that f(x)+a=0 has an irrational solution x (for then f(x)=−a is rational for an irrational number x).
Let f(x)=xn+cn−1xn−1+⋯+c1x+c0 be a polynomial with integer coefficients, with n≥2. It may be the case that f(x) has no real roots, for example, if n is even and the graph of y=f(x) lies above the x-axis. But certainly, if a is a sufficiently large negative integer, we can guarantee that f(x)+a=0 will have at least one real solution. In fact, by further making a a larger negative number, we can ensure that, say, the largest of the solutions of f(x)+a=0 has absolute value bigger than 1: ∣x∣>1.
Moreover, regardless of how large a negative number a needs to be, we can choose a so that c0+a=−p where p 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 sr of the monic integer coefficient polynomial f(x)+a must satisfy: s divides the leading coefficient of f(x) and r divides the last (free term) of f(x); in other words, s divides 1 and r divides p. Since p is prime, this gives only four possible rational solutions: x=±1,±p. Since we have ensured that ∣x∣>1, we are left with x=±p.
Let g(x)=f(x)+a. From the well known inequalities of absolute values ∣y+z∣≥∣y∣−∣z∣ and ∣y+z∣≤∣y∣+∣z∣, we obtain: ∣g(x)∣=xn+cn−1xn−1+…+c1x−p≥∣xn∣−cn−1xn−1+…+c1x−p and as long as ∣x∣>1 and n≥2: cn−1xn−1+⋯+c1x−p≤∣cn−1∣∣x∣n−1+⋯+∣c1∣∣x∣+p≤(∣cn−1∣+⋯+∣c1∣)∣x∣n−1+pn−1 If we let S=∣cn−1∣+⋯+∣c1∣, we can put everything together: ∣g(±p)∣≥pn−(S+1)pn−1=pn−1(p−(S+1)) Since S is fixed, we can choose the prime p large enough so that p>S+1, and hence the quantity p−(S+1) is positive. Therefore, g(±p)=0.
Thus g(x) has a real zero x, which cannot be rational since the only possibilities for rational zeros ±p fail to be zeros by the above. We conclude that x is an irrational root of g(x), whereas f(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+2004.
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