Find the smallest positive integer , or show no such exists, such that one can find infinitely many distinct -tuplets of positive rationals satisfying:
Solution
The smallest such is . For , let , where . Then we must have , . Taking mod in the first condition, we get that but since are coprime we have that . Taking mod , we get and since are coprime we get which tells us that . Similarly we get and hence we have . Clearly only or works and we only have finitely many such duplets.
Now for , we will look for triplets of the form where are positive integers. Fixing , it suffices to find infinitely many pairs of such that is an integer. We shall show that there are infinitely many solutions to by Vieta Jumping. If we let , the equation rearranges into . Viewing it as a quadratic in , we get that there exists another satisfying and that this satisfies , . Since is a positive integer, we get that is also a positive integer. Furthermore, . Hence our triplet will transform into another triplet where and we can then jump again but this time with as the subject of the quadratic. Starting with , this algorithm will generate infinitely many distinct triplets of desired positive integers which will then give us infinitely many distinct triplets of rationals satisfying the problem conditions.