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Number theory Difficulty 4.9 AIME Prove it Taiwan

Find all positive integers nn such that there exist a prime p>2p > 2 and a prime qq satisfying: the base-pp representation of nn is 2011, and the base-qq representation of nn is 10010 \cdots 0 (1 followed by any number of 0's).

Solution

n=256n = 256. Such nn as described in the problem satisfies n=2p3+p+1=qkn = 2p^3 + p + 1 = q^k, where kk is some positive integer. Obviously 2p3+p+12p^3 + p + 1 is even, so q=2q = 2.

It is easy to check that 32p3+p3|2p^3+p must hold. Thus from 32k13|2^k-1 we know 2k2|k. Let A=2k/2A = 2^{k/2}, we have (A+1)(A1)=2p3+p=(2p2+1)p(A+1)(A-1) = 2p^3+p = (2p^2+1)p, so p(A1)p|(A-1) or p(A+1)p|(A+1). Let A±1=ptA \pm 1 = pt, where tt is a positive integer. Then we have
pt2±2t=t(pt±2)=2p2+1. pt^2 \pm 2t = t(pt \pm 2) = 2p^2 + 1.
We have p±2t+1p|\pm2t+1, so 2t+1p2t+1 \ge p. Thus 8t2+8t+32p2+1pt22t8t^2+8t+3 \ge 2p^2+1 \ge pt^2-2t.
From this we get t<5t < 5, or when t5t \ge 5, 11t2>8t2+10t+3pt211t^2 > 8t^2+10t+3 \ge pt^2, that is p<11p < 11. If t<5t < 5, then from 2t+1p2t+1 \ge p we also have p<11p < 11.
Thus the only remaining possibilities are p=3,5,7p = 3, 5, 7. Substituting and checking, we know p=5,k=8,n=256p = 5, k = 8, n = 256 is the unique solution.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from zh; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.