Number theoryDifficulty 5.0AIMEProve itUnited States
Problem: Prove that there exists an infinite sequence of a1,a2,… positive integers such that the following condition holds: gcd(am,an)=1 if and only if ∣m−n∣=1.
Solution
Solution: Enumerate the primes p1,q1,p2,q2,… and define an=pnqn⋅{∏k=1n−2pk∏k=1n−2qkn even n odd. This works by construction. The idea is that you just take every pair i<j you want to not be relatively prime (meaning ∣i−j∣≥2) and throw in a prime. You can't do this by using a different prime for every pair (since each ai must be finite) and you can't use the same prime for a fixed i, so you do the next best thing and alternate using even and odd and you're done.
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