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Number theory Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Find the answer

Find all prime numbers pp such that y2=x3+4xy^{2}=x^{3}+4x has exactly pp solutions in integers modulo pp. In other words, determine all prime numbers pp with the following property: there exist exactly pp ordered pairs of integers (x,y)(x, y) such that x,y{0,1,,p1}x, y \in\{0,1, \ldots, p-1\} and p divides y2x34xp \text{ divides } y^{2}-x^{3}-4x.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Clearly p=2p=2 works with solutions (0,0)(0,0) and (1,1)(1,1) and not (0,1)(0,1) or (1,0)(1,0). If p3(mod4)p \equiv 3(\bmod 4) then -1 is not a quadratic residue, so for x3+4x0x^{3}+4x \neq 0, exactly one of x3+4xx^{3}+4x and x34x-x^{3}-4x is a square and gives two solutions (for positive and negative yy), so there's exactly two solutions for each such pair {x,x}\{x,-x\}. If xx is such that x3+4x=0x^{3}+4x=0, there's exactly one solution. If p1(mod4)p \equiv 1(\bmod 4), let ii be a square root of 1(modp)-1(\bmod p). The right hand side factors as x(x+2i)(x2i)x(x+2i)(x-2i). For x=0,2i,2ix=0,2i,-2i this is zero, there is one choice of yy, namely zero. Otherwise, the right hand side is nonzero. For any fixed xx, there are either 0 or 2 choices for yy. Replacing xx by x-x negates the right hand side, again producing two choices for yy since -1 is a quadratic residue. So the total number of solutions (x,y)(x, y) is 3(mod4)3(\bmod 4), and thus there cannot be exactly pp solutions.

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Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.