Problem:
Let be the set of perfect powers of integers, i.e. numbers of the form where are positive integers and . Write with terms in increasing order, so that . Prove that there exist infinitely many integers such that divides the difference .
Solution
Solution:
The idea is that most perfect powers are squares. If and , then . Note that is equivalent to . Hence we will be done if we can show that there exist infinitely many such that there are no perfect powers strictly between and .
Assume otherwise, so that there exists a positive integer such that: for and , there is a perfect power () between and . Without loss of generality, we can take to be . Note that and are consecutive squares, hence is odd, and thus . Let be the number of odd perfect powers that are at most .
By tallying the up (clearly they are all distinct), for any we have at least perfect odd powers between and , so that
In particular, for large enough we have
Now, if then . Also, so . So we have
Combining with the previous inequality, we have
for all large enough . However, this inequality is false for all large , contradiction. Therefore the problem statement holds.