Let be a function satisfying
for all integers and . Show that there exist positive integers and such that for all integers .
USA Tstst
Solution
Let be the set of primes not exceeding . For each , let and let .
We show that this is good enough to compute all values of , by looking at the exponent at each individual prime.
Claim — For any , we have
Proof. Note that for any , we have
We then take of both sides and recall ; this implies the result.
This essentially determines , and so now we just follow through. Choose and such that
the latter being possible by Chinese remainder theorem. Then, from the claim we have
for every , as desired.
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