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Number theory Difficulty 4.7 AIME Find the answer Italy

Problem:

Four positive integers a1<a2<a3<a4a_{1}<a_{2}<a_{3}<a_{4} are such that, given any two of them, their greatest common divisor is greater than 11, but mcd(a1,a2,a3,a4)=1\operatorname{mcd}(a_{1}, a_{2}, a_{3}, a_{4})=1. What is the minimum value that a4a_{4} can take?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (C)(\mathbf{C}). First of all, there is at least one number aka_{k} that is not divisible by 22, otherwise 22 divides mcd(a1,a2,a3,a4)\operatorname{mcd}(a_{1}, a_{2}, a_{3}, a_{4}). We want to prove that aka_{k} must have at least two distinct prime factors: indeed, if this were not the case, we would have ak=psa_{k}=p^{s} for some prime pp and natural number ss. But in this case, for every other number h=1,2,3,4h=1,2,3,4, hkh \neq k, we have that mcd(ah,ak)\operatorname{mcd}(a_{h}, a_{k}) can only be a number of the form prp^{r}, with 1<rs1<r \leq s (because it must be a divisor of psp^{s}, and it is greater than 11 by the first hypothesis). But this would imply that all four numbers are multiples of pp, which is impossible by the second hypothesis. Therefore there is at least one number aka_{k} that has at least two distinct prime factors other than two, and hence it is at least 35=153 \cdot 5=15. On the other hand, one verifies that the quadruple 6,10,12,156,10,12,15 satisfies all the hypotheses of the problem, so 1515 is indeed the minimum we are looking for.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.