Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it Spain

Find those positive integers n2014n \le 2014 for which there exist positive integers r,sr, s such that gcd(rs(r+s),n)=1\text{gcd}(rs(r+s), n) = 1 and nn does not divide rsr - s.

Solution

First we observe that if rr, ss, and r+sr + s are positive integers then at least one of them must be even. Indeed, if both are odd then their sum r+sr + s is even. Therefore, the number rs(r+s)rs(r + s) must also be even. So, if nn and rs(r+s)rs(r + s) are coprime then nn must be odd. Hence, if nn is even there are no suitable positive integers rr and ss that satisfy the given conditions.

* If n=1n = 1, then nn divides any number and in particular rsr - s. So, nn must be odd and greater than 1.
* If n=3n = 3 then rr and ss cannot be multiples of 3, and also they cannot have the same remainder when divided by 3 because of the condition 3(rs)3 \nmid (r-s). Therefore, one of them must leave remainder 1 and the other remainder 2 when divided by 3. This means that 3(r+s)3 \mid (r+s). We conclude that there are no suitable numbers rr and ss for n=3n = 3.

If n>3n > 3 and is odd, then the numbers r=2r = 2 and s=n1s = n - 1 satisfy
gcd(rs(r+s),n)=gcd(2(n1)(n+1),n)=1 \text{gcd}(rs(r+s), n) = \text{gcd}(2(n-1)(n+1), n) = 1
and n(rs)=3nn \nmid (r-s) = 3-n.

As a conclusion, we have that the set of positive integers that fulfill the requirements of the statement is
{5,7,11,13,,2011,2013} \{5, 7, 11, 13, \dots, 2011, 2013\}

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.