Determine whether there exists an infinite sequence of nonzero digits and a positive integer such that for every integer , the number is a perfect square.
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Answer. No.
Assume that is such a sequence. For each positive integer , let . By the assumption, for each there exists a positive integer such that .
I. For every , let be the greatest power of dividing . Let us show first that for every positive integer .
Assume, to the contrary, that there exists a positive integer such that , which yields
Since , we obtain . By the same arguments we obtain that . Denote this common value by .
Now, for each we have
One of the numbers and is not divisible by since otherwise one would have . On the other hand, we have , so divides one of these two factors. Thus we get
which implies , or . The last inequality is clearly false for sufficiently large values of . This contradiction shows that for all .
II. Consider now any integer . Since and , we have and . So, from we obtain and thus , which implies . Therefore,
Setting and , which are integers, we obtain
Both and are odd, since otherwise or would be a multiple of which is false by ; so one of the numbers and is not divisible by . Therefore (1) yields and , hence and thus
since . This implies that which contradicts the fact that contains digits. The desired result follows.
Solution 2
Again, we assume that a sequence satisfies the problem conditions, introduce the numbers and as in the previous solution, and notice that
for all . Consider any such . Since , the numbers and are not multiples of , and therefore the numbers and cannot be simultaneously multiples of , and hence one of them is not divisible either by or by . In view of (2), this means that the other one is divisible by either or by . Notice also that and have the same parity, so both are even.
On the other hand, we have , so , which implies that
Thus, if one of the numbers and is divisible by , then we have
and hence which is false for sufficiently large . So, assuming that is large, we get that divides one of the numbers and . Hence
Moreover, from (3) we get
so
Consequently, for we have
Next, we will use the following easy lemma.
Lemma. Let be a positive integer. Then .
Proof. Euler's theorem gives , so is divisible by and .
Now, for every large we have
since by (4); hence . Let us consider some large integer , and choose the minimal such that ; it exists by (4). Set . By (4) we have ; if is large this implies , so (6) also holds modulo . Then (6) and the lemma give
By (5) and the minimality of we have , so . Using we obtain
for sufficiently large . This, together with (7), shows that the \text{th} digit from the right in , which is , is zero. This contradicts the problem condition.