Find all positive integers which are not powers of and which satisfy the equation , where (and ) denote the greatest (and the least) numbers among all odd divisors of which are larger than .
(Tomáš Jurík)
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Let be the prime factorization of a satisfactory number . Here are all the prime divisors of and the exponents are positive integers. The given equation implies that (otherwise which contradicts to ) and that (otherwise is a power of ). Thus we have , and the equation becomes
(In the case when the left-hand of the last equation is simply .)
Since the number has only two divisors and , it holds that and
hence either or .
i. The case . The simplified equation
holds if and only if either , and , or , , and — then from it follows that . Consequently, there are exactly two solutions in the case (i), namely and .
ii. The case . The simplified equation
holds only for and . Notice that there is no restriction on the prime number excepting the inequality . Consequently, there are infinitely many solutions in the case (ii) and all of them are given by , where is any odd prime number.
Answer. All the solutions are: , and , where is any odd prime number.
Solution 2
The given equation implies that and (because of ). Since the ratio must be a power of , it follows from that either (i) , or (ii) .
i. The case . From we have and thus . Since must be a prime odd divisor of which is a multiple of , we conclude that and hence (both the values are clearly satisfactory).
ii. . Our way of deriving the inequality implies now that and hence is an (odd) prime number. All such are solutions indeed.