Determine all pairs of non-negative integers that satisfy the equation
Solution
Let the pair satisfy the equation. implies that , an impossibility. So we must have . Taking both sides modulo gives , implying that must be even. Taking both sides modulo gives , so that , whence is even too. So let us put and for a positive integer and a non-negative integer . The original equation can now be written as
As both and are positive (recall that ), we must have that the integer . It follows that
and we see that . This inequality is not true for , and it can be easily verified by induction that it also fails to hold for any . The inequality holds for , and it follows (and is easily checked) that the only pair that solves the original equation, is .
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