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Number theory Difficulty 5.8 AIME, harder Find the answer

Find all perfect squares nn such that if the positive integer a15a \geqslant 15 is some divisor of nn then a+15a+15 is a prime power.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

We call a positive integer aa "nice" if a+15a+15 is a prime power.

From the definition, the numbers n=1,4,9n=1,4,9 satisfy the required property. Suppose that for some tZ+t \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}, the number n=t215n=t^{2} \geqslant 15 also satisfies the required property. We have two cases:

1. If nn is a power of 2, then n{16,64}n \in\{16,64\} since

24+15=31,25+15=47,and26+15=79 2^{4}+15=31, \quad 2^{5}+15=47, \quad \text{and} \quad 2^{6}+15=79

are prime, and 27+15=143=11132^{7}+15=143=11 \cdot 13 is not a prime power. (Thus 272^{7} does not divide nn and therefore no higher power of 2 satisfies the required property.)

2. Suppose nn has some odd prime divisor pp. If p>3p>3 then p2np^{2} \mid n and p2>15p^{2}>15 which imply that p2p^{2} must be a nice number. Hence

p2+15=qm p^{2}+15=q^{m}

for some prime qq and some mZ+m \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}. Since pp is odd, then p2+15p^{2}+15 is even, thus we can conclude that q=2q=2. I.e.

p2+15=2m p^{2}+15=2^{m}

Considering the above modulo 3, we can see that p2+150,1mod3p^{2}+15 \equiv 0,1 \bmod 3, so 2m1mod32^{m} \equiv 1 \bmod 3, and so mm is even. Suppose m=2km=2k for some kZ+k \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}. So we have (2kp)(2k+p)=15(2^{k}-p)(2^{k}+p)=15 and (2k+p)(2kp)=2p10(2^{k}+p)-(2^{k}-p)=2p \geqslant 10. Thus

2kp=1and2k+p=15 2^{k}-p=1 \quad \text{and} \quad 2^{k}+p=15

giving p=7p=7 and k=3k=3. Thus we can write n=4x9y49zn=4^{x} \cdot 9^{y} \cdot 49^{z} for some non-negative integers x,y,zx, y, z.

Note that 27 is not nice, so 27n27 \nmid n and therefore y1y \leqslant 1. The numbers 18 and 21 are also not nice, so similarly, x,yx, y and y,zy, z cannot both be positive. Hence, we just need to consider n=4x49zn=4^{x} \cdot 49^{z} with z1z \geqslant 1.

Note that 737^{3} is not nice, so z=1z=1. By checking directly, we can see that 72+15=26,272+15=113,472+15=2117^{2}+15=2^{6}, 2 \cdot 7^{2}+15=113, 4 \cdot 7^{2}+15=211 are nice, but 8728 \cdot 7^{2} is not nice, so only n=49,196n=49,196 satisfy the required property.

Therefore, the numbers nn which satisfy the required property are 1,4,9,16,49,641,4,9,16,49,64 and 196.

Remark by PSC. One can get rid of the case 3n3 \mid n by noting that in that case, we have 9n9 \mid n. But then n2+15n^{2}+15 is a multiple of 3 but not a multiple of 9 which is impossible. This simplifies a little bit the second case.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.