Find all quadruples of positive integers for which
Solutions — 3
Solution 1
We will use the fact that if and otherwise. A consequence is that if the sum of the squares of integers is divisible by and is not divisible by , then at least one of the integers is divisible by .
Because is divisible by , the above implies that at least one of must be divisible by . The equation implies that a second of these integers must be divisible by . But then two integers are left the squares of which add to a number which is divisible by , so by the same reasoning, all four integers must be divisible by .
Dividing now both sides of the equation by leaves us with the sum of four squares equal to , which still is divisible by . The same reasoning as above implies that the four integers must all be divisible by , i.e. the original are all divisible by .
Let , , and , it then suffices to list solutions to
By permuting, we can assume wlog that and .
We cannot have or the sum on the LHS becomes too large. We also cannot have as the sum becomes too small. So can only be or . If , the equation implies and, as we must have . But if then which does not have a solution in integers. The only remaining case, then, is , in which case whose only positive solution up to permutation is . Because , we must have and . Multiplying this solution by gives as one solution to the original problem. Three more solutions are obtained by permutation, giving these four solutions
, , , .
Solution 2
We note that implies that
From the fact given at the start, it follows that if is divisible by , both integers, and , must be divisible by as well. As , this implies that each of the four numbers must be divisible by , hence each of is divisible by .
After dividing both sides of the equation by we can repeat this argument and obtain that are all divisible by . Let , , and . We then wish to solve
We assume and and consider permutations later.
There are two ways of writing as a sum of two squares: . Noting that and have the same parity but cannot be equal, and similarly for , we see that the only possibilities with satisfying and are
which lead to or . This gives the following four solutions , the second and the third are obtained from the above by swapping and , or and :
Solution 3
The equation implies . Let be coprime integers such that . Then, there exist integers such that , , and . The question becomes:
From the observation made at the start (before solution 1) we see that for no has the equation a solution in positive integers. This shows that both, and , must be divisible by . Moreover, if an equation with has a solution, both, and , must be divisible by . This would contradict our assumption that and are coprime. Hence, we must have
Assuming and , and because is the only way to write as a sum of two squares, we have and so .
Swapping with corresponds to interchanging with ; swapping and corresponds to interchanging with . Doing both swaps interchanges with and with . This gives the four solutions stated above.