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Number theory Difficulty 6.3 National olympiad Prove it

Find all natural numbers nn for which there exists an integer a>2a>2 such that ad+2dan2na^{d}+2^{d} \mid a^{n}-2^{n} for all positive divisors dnd \neq n of nn.

Solution

Answer: nn is prime or a power of two (including n=1n=1).
Indeed, if nn is an odd prime, then the only divisor is d=1d=1. Choose a=2k2a=2^{k}-2 with 3kn+13 \leq k \leq n+1, for example a=6a=6. Then we need to check that 2k2+2=2k2^{k}-2+2=2^{k} is a divisor of (2k2)n2n\left(2^{k}-2\right)^{n}-2^{n}. This is the difference between two terms that both have exactly nn factors of 2, so the difference has at least n+1n+1 factors of 2.

In the second case, we have n=2mn=2^{m} with m0m \geq 0. If m=0m=0, then there are no positive divisors dnd \neq n, so the condition holds because the requirement is vacuously true. Note also that m=1m=1 gives the even prime 2. For all divisors dnd \neq n, we now observe that

an2n=ade2de(2d)e2de=2n((1)e1)modad+2d a^{n}-2^{n}=a^{d e}-2^{d e} \equiv\left(-2^{d}\right)^{e}-2^{d e}=2^{n}\left((-1)^{e}-1\right) \quad \bmod a^{d}+2^{d}

is zero for all aa. Thus, an2na^{n}-2^{n} is a multiple of ad+2da^{d}+2^{d}, or in other words, ad+2dan2na^{d}+2^{d} \mid a^{n}-2^{n}. This checks both cases.

Now suppose that nn is neither a prime nor a power of two. Then we can write nn as n=den=d e with e1e \neq 1 odd (since nn is not a power of two) and d1d \neq 1 (since nn is not a prime). Since (1)e1=2(-1)^{e}-1=2, the above calculation now implies that ad+2d2n+1a^{d}+2^{d} \mid 2^{n+1}. This means that ad+2da^{d}+2^{d} is a power of two, so ad=2k2da^{d}=2^{k}-2^{d} for some kk implies (a2)d=2kd1\left(\frac{a}{2}\right)^{d}=2^{k-d}-1 but this implies that kd2k-d \geq 2. Thus, this square is -1 modulo 4, which is impossible. If dd is odd, then we observe that

2kd=(a2)d+1=(a2+1)((a2)d1(a2)d2++1). 2^{k-d}=\left(\frac{a}{2}\right)^{d}+1=\left(\frac{a}{2}+1\right)\left(\left(\frac{a}{2}\right)^{d-1}-\left(\frac{a}{2}\right)^{d-2}+\cdots+1\right).

Since d1d \neq 1, a2+1\frac{a}{2}+1 is strictly less than (a2)d+1\left(\frac{a}{2}\right)^{d}+1. The second factor in this product is a sum of an even number of terms with the parity of a2\frac{a}{2} and a 1, so this factor is odd. Since the second factor is also greater than 1, this contradicts the fact that it must be a divisor of the power of two 2kd2^{k-d}.

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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.