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Saudi Arabian Mathematical Competitions

Combinatorics Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Prove it Saudi Arabia

It is given a graph whose vertices are positive integers and an edge between numbers aa and bb exists if and only if
a+b+1∣a2+b2+1. a+b+1 \mid a^{2}+b^{2}+1 .
Is this graph connected?

Solution

If x,y∈Z+x, y \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}, define x↔yx \leftrightarrow y if and only if x,yx, y are connected by some edge. We have for all a∈Z+a \in \mathbb{Z}^{+},
a2+a+1∣(a2−a+1)(a2+a+1)=a4+a2+1. a^{2}+a+1 \mid (a^{2}-a+1)(a^{2}+a+1) = a^{4}+a^{2}+1 .
Thus a↔a2a \leftrightarrow a^{2} for all aa, then also true for a+1↔(a+1)2a+1 \leftrightarrow (a+1)^{2}. Moreover,
(a2)2+((a+1)2)2+1=2a4+4a3+6a2+4a+2=(2a2+2a+2)(a2+a+1) \begin{aligned} \left(a^{2}\right)^{2}+\left((a+1)^{2}\right)^{2}+1 & = 2a^{4}+4a^{3}+6a^{2}+4a+2 \\ & = \left(2a^{2}+2a+2\right)\left(a^{2}+a+1\right) \end{aligned}
Thus a2+(a+1)2+1=2a2+2a+2a^{2}+(a+1)^{2}+1=2a^{2}+2a+2 divides (a2)2+((a+1)2)2+1\left(a^{2}\right)^{2}+\left((a+1)^{2}\right)^{2}+1, which implies that a2↔(a+1)2a^{2} \leftrightarrow (a+1)^{2}. Hence,
a↔a2↔(a+1)2↔a+1, a \leftrightarrow a^{2} \leftrightarrow (a+1)^{2} \leftrightarrow a+1,
this means that every two consecutive integers a,a+1a, a+1 are connected. Thus the given infinity graph is connected. □\square

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