Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 6.6 National olympiad Prove it

2. Let nN,ann \in \mathbf{N}^{*}, a_{n} be the number of positive integer solutions (x,y)(x, y) to the indeterminate equation x2y2=102302nx^{2}-y^{2}=10^{2} \cdot 30^{2 n}. Prove: ana_{n} is not a perfect square.

Solution

2. Let (x,y)(x, y) be its positive integer solution, then x,yx, y have the same parity, hence, xy2x+y2=\frac{x-y}{2} \cdot \frac{x+y}{2}= 52×302n=22n×32n×52n+25^{2} \times 30^{2 n}=2^{2 n} \times 3^{2 n} \times 5^{2 n+2}.

We can obtain
an=12((2n+1)2(2n+3)1)=(n+1)(4n2+6n+1)a_{n}=\frac{1}{2}\left((2 n+1)^{2}(2 n+3)-1\right)=(n+1)\left(4 n^{2}+6 n+1\right)
(because xy2<x+y2\frac{x-y}{2}<\frac{x+y}{2}, they are both positive divisors of 22n×32n×52n+22^{2 n} \times 3^{2 n} \times 5^{2 n+2}.) Note that,
(n+1,4n2+6n+1)=(n+1,(4n+2)(n+1)1)=(n+1,1)=1,\begin{aligned} \left(n+1,4 n^{2}+6 n+1\right) & =(n+1,(4 n+2)(n+1)-1) \\ & =(n+1,-1)=1, \end{aligned}

Also, (2n+1)2<4n2+6n+1<(2n+2)2(2 n+1)^{2}<4 n^{2}+6 n+1<(2 n+2)^{2}, which means 4n2+6n+14 n^{2}+6 n+1 is not a perfect square. Therefore, ana_{n} is not a perfect square.

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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.