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Number theory Difficulty 7.8 National olympiad, round 2 Find the answer

Let pp be a prime number and let kk be a positive integer. Suppose that the numbers ai=ik+ia_{i}=i^{k}+i for i=0,1,,p1i=0,1, \ldots, p-1 form a complete residue system modulo pp. What is the set of possible remainders of a2a_{2} upon division by pp?

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

First observe that p=2p=2 does not satisfy the condtion, so pp must be an odd prime. Lemma. If p>2p>2 is a prime and Fp\mathbb{F}_{p} is the field containing pp elements, then for any integer 1n<p1 \leq n<p one has the following equality in the field Fp\mathbb{F}_{p} αFp(1+αn)={0, if p1gcd(p1,n) is even 2n, otherwise \prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}}\left(1+\alpha^{n}\right)= \begin{cases}0, & \text { if } \frac{p-1}{\operatorname{gcd}(p-1, n)} \text { is even } \\ 2^{n}, & \text { otherwise }\end{cases} Proof. We may safely assume that np1n \mid p-1 since it can be easily proved that the set of nn-th powers of the elements of Fp\mathbb{F}_{p}^{*} coincides with the set of gcd(p1,n)\operatorname{gcd}(p-1, n)-th powers of the same elements. Assume that t1,t2,,tnt_{1}, t_{2}, \ldots, t_{n} are the roots of the polynomial tn+1Fp[x]t^{n}+1 \in \mathbb{F}_{p}[x] in some extension of the field Fp\mathbb{F}_{p}. It follows that αFp(1+αn)=αFpi=1n(αti)=i=1nαFp(tiα)=i=1nΦ(ti)\prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}}\left(1+\alpha^{n}\right)=\prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}} \prod_{i=1}^{n}\left(\alpha-t_{i}\right)=\prod_{i=1}^{n} \prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}}\left(t_{i}-\alpha\right)=\prod_{i=1}^{n} \Phi\left(t_{i}\right) where we define Φ(t)=αFp(tα)=tp11\Phi(t)=\prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}}(t-\alpha)=t^{p-1}-1. Therefore αFp(1+αn)=i=1n(tip11)=i=1n((tin)p1n1)=i=1n((1)p1n1)={0, if p1n is even 2n, otherwise \prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}}\left(1+\alpha^{n}\right)=\prod_{i=1}^{n}\left(t_{i}^{p-1}-1\right)=\prod_{i=1}^{n}\left(\left(t_{i}^{n}\right)^{\frac{p-1}{n}}-1\right)=\prod_{i=1}^{n}\left((-1)^{\frac{p-1}{n}}-1\right)= \begin{cases}0, & \text { if } \frac{p-1}{n} \text { is even } \\ 2^{n}, & \text { otherwise }\end{cases} Let us now get back to our problem. Suppose the numbers ik+i,0ip1i^{k}+i, 0 \leq i \leq p-1 form a complete residue system modulo pp. It follows that αFp(αk+α)=αFpα\prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}}\left(\alpha^{k}+\alpha\right)=\prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}} \alpha so that αFp(αk1+1)=1\prod_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{p}^{*}}\left(\alpha^{k-1}+1\right)=1 in Fp\mathbb{F}_{p}. According to the Lemma, this means that 2k1=12^{k-1}=1 in Fp\mathbb{F}_{p}, or equivalently, that 2k11(modp)2^{k-1} \equiv 1(\bmod p). Therefore a2=2k+24(modp)a_{2}=2^{k}+2 \equiv 4(\bmod p) so that the remainder of a2a_{2} upon division by pp is either 4 when p>3p>3 or is 1 , when p=3p=3.

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