Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /464 of 520

Number theory Difficulty 7.0 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it

Theorem 2 The complete set of primitive solutions for which yy is even in the indeterminate equation (1) is given by the following formulas:
x=r2s2,y=2rs,z=r2+s2,x=r^{2}-s^{2}, \quad y=2 r s, \quad z=r^{2}+s^{2},

where r,sr, s are any integers satisfying the following conditions:
r>s>0,(s,r)=1,2r+s.r>s>0, \quad(s, r)=1, \quad 2 \nmid r+s .

Solution

First, we prove that x,y,zx, y, z given by equations (6) and (7) are certainly primitive solutions of (1) and 2y2 \mid y. It is easy to verify that for any r,sr, s (not necessarily satisfying (7)), x,y,zx, y, z given by equation (6) are certainly solutions of (1) and 2y2 \mid y. From r>s>0r>s>0, we know that these are positive solutions. From equation (6), we have
(x,z)2r2,(x,z)2s2(x, z) \mid 2 r^{2}, \quad (x, z) \mid 2 s^{2}

From this, using Theorem 2 and Theorem 3 of Chapter 1, §4, we derive
(x,z)(2r2,2s2)=2(r2,s2)(x, z) \mid (2 r^{2}, 2 s^{2}) = 2 (r^{2}, s^{2})

By the condition (s,r)=1(s, r)=1 and Theorem 5 of Chapter 1, §4, we have (r2,s2)=1(r^{2}, s^{2})=1, thus
(x,z)2(x, z) \mid 2

By the condition 2r+s2 \nmid r+s, we know 2x2 \nmid x, so it must be that (x,z)=1(x, z)=1. This proves the desired conclusion.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

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