Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 6.5 National olympiad Prove it

Example 1 Prove: (a,[b,c])=[(a,b),(a,c)](a,[b, c])=[(a, b),(a, c)].

Solution

If a=0a=0, the equation obviously holds. Therefore, we can assume a,b,ca, b, c are positive integers,
a=p1q1psσ3,b=p1β1p3β3,c=p1γ1p3γ3.a=p_{1}^{q_{1}} \cdots p_{s}^{\sigma_{3}}, \quad b=p_{1}^{\beta_{1}} \cdots p_{3}^{\beta_{3}}, \quad c=p_{1}^{\gamma_{1}} \cdots p_{3}^{\gamma_{3}}.

By Corollary 4, we get
(a,[b,c])=p1η1ppjηj,ηj=min(αj,max(βj,γj)),1js[(a,b),(a,c)]=p1τ1psτs,τj=max(min(αj,βj),min(αj,γj)),1js\begin{array}{l} (a,[b, c])=p_{1}^{\eta_{1}} \cdots p_{p_{j}^{\eta_{j}}}, \\ \eta_{j}=\min \left(\alpha_{j}, \max \left(\beta_{j}, \gamma_{j}\right)\right), \quad 1 \leqslant j \leqslant s \\ {[(a, b),(a, c)]=p_{1}^{\tau_{1}} \cdots p_{s}^{\tau_{s}},} \\ \tau_{j}=\max \left(\min \left(\alpha_{j}, \beta_{j}\right), \min \left(\alpha_{j}, \gamma_{j}\right)\right), \quad 1 \leqslant j \leqslant s \end{array}

It is easy to verify that, regardless of the size relationship between αj,βj,γj\alpha_{j}, \beta_{j}, \gamma_{j}, we always have τj=ηj(1js)\tau_{j}=\eta_{j}(1 \leqslant j \leqslant s). This proves the desired conclusion. It is relatively difficult to prove this relationship directly using the method of §4.

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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.