Let and be positive integers such that is prime and . Prove that there is at most one pair of positive integers such that
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
We distinguish two different cases:
Case 1: . In this case, and do not have a common divisor (other than 1) either, and it follows from the factorisation
that both and have to be th powers, say and . Then it follows that
Both factors have to be positive, and it is clear that
so since is given to be a prime number, we must have and thus .
Then
The right hand side is an increasing function of , so there is at most one value of which satisfies the equation. If there is such an integer , then there is only one corresponding and thus only one solution .
Case 2: . Then has to be divisible by , which implies that , and thus , is divisible by as well. It follows that and are divisible by , hence this has to be the case for as well, so for some integer . Since is divisible by , we can also set to obtain
so that would have to lie between the two consecutive integers and , an obvious contradiction.
We conclude that there is always at most one solution .
Solution 2
Since , we define as the difference between and . Then
In addition
On the other hand, by binomially expanding , every term (except ) in the equation is divisible by , therefore . Let – we will show that .
However, since , and , we have . This means that every term on the right hand side is divisible by , and the left is only . So either , in which case we require
which has no solutions for , or , in which case . The equation can then be written as , and as the right hand side is a strictly increasing function of , for a given and there can be at most one solution.