Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 6.9 National olympiad Prove it

Lemma 7 When the prime p3p \geqslant 3 and the integer a=a1a2ana=a_{1} a_{2} \cdots a_{n}, we have
(ap)=(a1p)(a2p)(anp).\left(\frac{a}{p}\right)=\left(\frac{a_{1}}{p}\right)\left(\frac{a_{2}}{p}\right) \ldots\left(\frac{a_{n}}{p}\right) .

Solution

Proof: Still by (30), we have
(ap)ap12=a1p12a2p12anp12(a1p)(a1p)(anp)(modp)\begin{aligned} \left(\frac{a}{p}\right) \equiv & a^{\frac{p-1}{2}}=a_{1} \frac{p-1}{2} a_{2} \frac{p-1}{2} \cdots a_{n} \frac{p-1}{2} \equiv\left(\frac{a_{1}}{p}\right)\left(\frac{a_{1}}{p}\right) \\ & \cdots\left(\frac{a_{n}}{p}\right)(\bmod p) \end{aligned}

Thus, we get (ap)(a1p)(a2p)(anp)0(modp)\left(\frac{a}{p}\right)-\left(\frac{a_{1}}{p}\right)\left(\frac{a_{2}}{p}\right) \ldots\left(\frac{a_{n}}{p}\right) \equiv 0(\bmod p), but it is easy to see that
(ap)(a1p)(a2p)(anp)2,\left|\left(\frac{a}{p}\right)-\left(\frac{a_{1}}{p}\right)\left(\frac{a_{2}}{p}\right) \ldots\left(\frac{a_{n}}{p}\right)\right| \leqslant 2,

and p3p \geqslant 3, so it must be that
(ap)=(a1p)(a2p)(app),\left(\frac{a}{p}\right)=\left(\frac{a_{1}}{p}\right)\left(\frac{a_{2}}{p}\right) \ldots\left(\frac{a_{p}}{p}\right),

which is the result we wanted to prove.

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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.