Find all perfect squares such that if the positive integer is some divisor of then is a prime power.
Solution
We call a positive integer "nice" if is a prime power.
From the definition, the numbers satisfy the required property. Suppose that for some , the number also satisfies the required property. We have two cases:
1. If is a power of 2, then since
are prime, and is not a prime power. (Thus does not divide and therefore no higher power of 2 satisfies the required property.)
2. Suppose has some odd prime divisor . If then and which imply that must be a nice number. Hence
for some prime and some . Since is odd, then is even, thus we can conclude that . I.e.
Considering the above modulo 3, we can see that , so , and so is even. Suppose for some . So we have and . Thus
giving and . Thus we can write for some non-negative integers .
Note that 27 is not nice, so and therefore . The numbers 18 and 21 are also not nice, so similarly, and cannot both be positive. Hence, we just need to consider with .
Note that is not nice, so . By checking directly, we can see that are nice, but is not nice, so only satisfy the required property.
Therefore, the numbers which satisfy the required property are and 196.
Remark by PSC. One can get rid of the case by noting that in that case, we have . But then is a multiple of 3 but not a multiple of 9 which is impossible. This simplifies a little bit the second case.