For each positive integer , let be the number of integers that do not have prime factors in common with . Determine all positive integers such that there are distinct positive integers so that the set: Have exactly consecutive integers (in some order).
Solution
1. **Understanding the Euler's Totient Function **:
The Euler's Totient Function counts the number of integers from to that are coprime with . For a prime number , because all numbers less than are coprime with .
2. Initial Observations:
- If is among the , then , which would mean contains duplicate elements, violating the distinctness condition.
- If is among the , then must be in . Since , cannot be among the because there are no with . Thus, the only set with is .
3. **Considering **:
- For , is even. Therefore, must all be even.
- This implies are all odd because the integers in are consecutive.
4. Smallest Element Analysis:
- Let be the smallest of . Then cannot be in the set since it would be odd and therefore one of the , but , a contradiction.
- Therefore, the smallest element of is . We also realize that because if there were a in such that , we'd need to be in , but the only element in smaller than is , so we'd have , which is a contradiction since must have distinct elements.
5. Inductive Process:
- The two smallest elements of are and , in that order.
- Repeating the same process for , we find a similar conclusion.
- Proceeding inductively, it's possible to show that if , then the elements of , in increasing order, are:
6. Consecutive Numbers and Primes:
- Because they are all consecutive numbers, it means that for all , which means that all are prime.
- Since they all form an arithmetic progression of ratio , the largest possible value for is , achieved with:
- This means that there are also examples for and , namely, and .
The final answer is