Olympiad Maths Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.8 AIME, harder Prove it Czech Republic

Nice prime *is a prime equal to the difference of two cubes of positive integers.*
Find last digits of all nice primes.

Solution

Firstly, let us note that 5343=615^3 - 4^3 = 61, 2313=72^3 - 1^3 = 7 and 3323=193^3 - 2^3 = 19 are nice primes, so 1, 7 and 9 belong to desired digits. We show that they are all desired digits.
Let p=m3n3p = m^3 - n^3 be a nice prime, where m>nm > n are positive integers. Second factor in rewriting
p=m3n3=(mn)(m2+mn+n2), p = m^3 - n^3 = (m-n)(m^2 + mn + n^2),
is greater than 1, thus the first one is 1 and therefore m=n+1m = n + 1. After substitution we obtain
p=3n2+3n+1.(1) p = 3n^2 + 3n + 1. \qquad (1)
An estimate 3n2+3n+1>63n^2 + 3n + 1 > 6 gives that the prime pp is odd and greater than 5. This excludes 0, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8 as the last digits and 3 stays the only remaining digit to exclude.
It is sufficient to find remainders of the numbers 3n2+3n+13n^2 + 3n + 1 after division by 5. For remainders 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 of nn we obtain remainders 1, 2, 4, 2, 1 of (1) which ones really exclude the last digit 3.

*Answer.* The last digits of the nice primes are 1, 7 and 9.

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