Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Let f:Z{1,2,,10100}f: \mathbb{Z} \rightarrow \{1, 2, \dots, 10^{100}\} be a function satisfying
gcd(f(x),f(y))=gcd(f(x),xy) \text{gcd}(f(x), f(y)) = \text{gcd}(f(x), x - y)
for all integers xx and yy. Show that there exist positive integers mm and nn such that f(x)=gcd(m+x,n)f(x) = \text{gcd}(m + x, n) for all integers xx.

Solution

Let P\mathcal{P} be the set of primes not exceeding 1010010^{100}. For each pPp \in \mathcal{P}, let ep=maxxνp(f(x))e_p = \max_x \nu_p(f(x)) and let cp=argmaxxνp(f(x))c_p = \underset{x}{\operatorname{argmax}} \nu_p(f(x)).
We show that this is good enough to compute all values of xx, by looking at the exponent at each individual prime.

Claim — For any pPp \in \mathcal{P}, we have
νp(f(x))=min(νp(xcp),ep). \nu_p(f(x)) = \min(\nu_p(x - c_p), e_p).
Proof. Note that for any xx, we have
gcd(f(cp),f(x))=gcd(f(cp),xcp). \text{gcd}(f(c_p), f(x)) = \text{gcd}(f(c_p), x - c_p).
We then take νp\nu_p of both sides and recall νp(f(x))νp(f(cp))=ep\nu_p(f(x)) \le \nu_p(f(c_p)) = e_p; this implies the result. \square

This essentially determines ff, and so now we just follow through. Choose nn and mm such that
n=pPpepmcp(modpep)pP n = \prod_{p \in \mathcal{P}} p^{e_p} \\ m \equiv -c_p \pmod{p^{e_p}} \quad \forall p \in \mathcal{P}
the latter being possible by Chinese remainder theorem. Then, from the claim we have
f(x)=pPpνp(f(x))=pnpmin(νp(xcp),ep)=pnpmin(νp(x+m),νp(n))=gcd(x+m,n) \begin{aligned} f(x) &= \prod_{p \in \mathcal{P}} p^{\nu_p(f(x))} = \prod_{p \nmid n} p^{\min(\nu_p(x-c_p), e_p)} \\ &= \prod_{p \mid n} p^{\min(\nu_p(x+m), \nu_p(n))} = \text{gcd}(x+m, n) \end{aligned}
for every xZx \in \mathbb{Z}, as desired.

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