Does there exist an infinite set consisting of positive integers such that for any , with , the sum is square-free? (A positive integer is called square-free if no perfect square greater than 1 divides it.)
International Mathematics Competition
Solution
The answer is yes. We construct an infinite sequence so that is square-free for all . Suppose that we already have some numbers , which satisfy this condition and find a suitable number to be the next element of the sequence. We will choose of the form , with and some positive integer . For we have , where and are co-prime, so any perfect square dividing is co-prime with . In order to find a suitable , take a large and consider the values . If a value is not suitable, this means that there is an index and some prime such that . For this is impossible because . Moreover, we also have , so . For any fixed and , the values for for which form an arithmetic progression with difference . Therefore, there are at most such values. In total, the number of unsuitable values is less than If is big enough then this is less than , and there exist a suitable choice for .