Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 6.5 National olympiad Prove it

20. a) Show that if pp is prime, then the only solutions of the congruence x2x(modp)x^{2} \equiv x(\bmod p) are those integers xx with x0x \equiv 0 or 1(modp)1(\bmod p).
b) Show that if pp is prime and kk is a positive integer, then the only solutions of x2x(modpk)x^{2} \equiv x\left(\bmod p^{k}\right) are those integers xx such that x0x \equiv 0 or 1(modpk)1\left(\bmod p^{k}\right).

Solution

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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.