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Number theory Difficulty 7.3 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Romania

Given a positive integer kk and an integer a3(mod8)a \equiv 3 \pmod{8}, show that am+a+2a^m + a + 2 is divisible by 2k2^k for some positive integer mm.

Solution

Proceed by induction on kk. Since a3(mod8)a \equiv 3 \pmod{8}, m=1m = 1 works for k=1,2,3k = 1, 2, 3, so let k3k \ge 3 and let mm be a positive integer such that am+a+2a^m + a + 2 is divisible by 2k2^k.

If (am+a+2)/2k(a^m + a + 2)/2^k is even, then am+a+2a^m + a + 2 is clearly divisible by 2k+12^{k+1}.
If (am+a+2)/2k(a^m + a + 2)/2^k is odd, we will show that am+2k2+a+2a^{m+2^{k-2}} + a + 2 is divisible by 2k+12^{k+1}.
To this end, write am+2k2+a+2=a2k2(am+a+2)(a+2)(a2k21)a^{m+2^{k-2}} + a + 2 = a^{2^{k-2}}(a^m + a + 2) - (a+2)(a^{2^{k-2}} - 1). The first term is an odd multiple of 2k2^k, and it is sufficient to prove that so is the second.
Induct on k3k \ge 3 to show that a2k21a^{2^{k-2}} - 1 is an odd multiple of 2k2^k. Since a3(mod8)a \equiv 3 \pmod{8}, this is clearly the case if k=3k=3, and the induction step follows from the identity a2k11=(a2k21)(a2k2+1)=(a2k21)((a2k21)+2)a^{2^{k-1}} - 1 = (a^{2^{k-2}} - 1)(a^{2^{k-2}} + 1) = (a^{2^{k-2}} - 1)((a^{2^{k-2}} - 1) + 2). This completes the proof.

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