Let be an even positive integer. Let be a monic, real polynomial of degree ; that is to say, for some real coefficients . Suppose that for all integers such that . Find all other real numbers for which .
Solution
The only other real numbers with this property are . (Note that these are indeed \emph{other} values than because .) Define the polynomial . The statement that is equivalent (for ) to the statement that is a root of . Thus we know that are roots of , and we can write for some monic quadratic polynomial . Equating the coefficients of and on both sides gives and , respectively. Since is even, we have . We conclude that there are precisely two other real numbers such that , and they are .
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