Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it China

Let kk be a positive integer no less than 33 and θ\theta be a real number. Prove that, if both cos(k1)θ\cos(k - 1)\theta and coskθ\cos k\theta are rational numbers, then there exists a positive integer n>kn > k, such that both cos(n1)θ\cos(n - 1)\theta and cosnθ\cos n\theta are rational numbers.

Solution

First we prove a lemma.
Lemma Let α\alpha be a real number. If cosα\cos \alpha is rational, then cosmα\cos m\alpha is rational for any positive integer mm.
We prove by induction on mm. By cos2α=2cos2α1\cos 2\alpha = 2\cos^2\alpha - 1, we get that the lemma is true for m=2m = 2.
We suppose that the lemma is true for mlm \le l (l2l \ge 2).
Since
cos(l+1)α=2coslαcosαcos(l1)α, \cos(l + 1)\alpha = 2\cos l\alpha \cdot \cos \alpha - \cos(l - 1)\alpha,
then we conclude that the lemma is true for m=l+1m = l + 1 and our induction is complete.
By the lemma, setting m=km = k, m=k+1m = k + 1 for α=kθ\alpha = k\theta, (k1)θ(k-1)\theta, it follows that cosk2θ\cos k^2 \theta, cos(k21)θ\cos(k^2 - 1)\theta are rational numbers. Since k2>kk^2 > k, the statement holds.

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