Find all possible values for where is a function from to satisfying the following three conditions:
- ;
- for any rational , if , then ;
- for all rational and .
Find all possible values for where is a function from to satisfying the following three conditions:
- ;
- for any rational , if , then ;
- for all rational and .
First, the equality shows that , and thus that for any non-zero natural number .
Furthermore, for all with we have , and since . In particular, . Finally, for any rational , we have , so is even.
Let then be an odd natural number, of the form : we necessarily have . We also know that , since , so , which implies that , consequently .
This allows us to show by induction that for any odd we have , and thus .
We deduce from all this that .
Conversely, it remains to verify that a function as described in the statement does indeed exist. It suffices for this to observe that the function defined by
where denotes the 2-adic valuation of the integer , satisfies the conditions of the statement.