Problem:
Let be the Fibonacci sequence, the sequence of positive integers with and for all . A Fibonacci number is by definition a number appearing in this sequence.
Let be the sequence consisting of all the integers that are products of two Fibonacci numbers (not necessarily distinct), in increasing order. The first few terms are
since, for example , and .
Consider the sequence of successive differences of the sequence, where for . The first few terms of are
Prove that every number in is a Fibonacci number.
Solution
Solution:
Let and . Note for later use that , and . We use Binet's formula for the Fibonacci numbers: . (The reader who is not familiar with this formula may prove it inductively by checking that it works for and is compatible with the Fibonacci recurrence.)
Each may be written as with . Binet's formula gives
where we define . In what follows, we will use two properties of : it is positive for all , and for all . Both properties are easily proved via the observation that is, for all , the integer closest to .
Now fix and consider the set of products for which . All of these products share a "leading" term of . The remaining term can be written as . By the two properties of noted above, we have
and thus
We note that the smallest and largest products in inequality (1) are and , respectively. Thus the largest product with is equal to the smallest product with . This implies that the sequence consists of chains of the form (1) strung end to end for successively increasing values of . All that remains is to show that the difference between any two consecutive terms in (1) is a Fibonacci number.
Such differences are of the form (for some integer ), except in the middle where there is one difference of the form . We now show that both of these expressions are equal to :
Therefore, every term of is a Fibonacci number.