Find those positive integers for which there exist positive integers such that and does not divide .
Solution
First we observe that if , , and are positive integers then at least one of them must be even. Indeed, if both are odd then their sum is even. Therefore, the number must also be even. So, if and are coprime then must be odd. Hence, if is even there are no suitable positive integers and that satisfy the given conditions.
* If , then divides any number and in particular . So, must be odd and greater than 1.
* If then and cannot be multiples of 3, and also they cannot have the same remainder when divided by 3 because of the condition . Therefore, one of them must leave remainder 1 and the other remainder 2 when divided by 3. This means that . We conclude that there are no suitable numbers and for .
If and is odd, then the numbers and satisfy
and .
As a conclusion, we have that the set of positive integers that fulfill the requirements of the statement is