Let . Suppose are positive integers satisfying Compute the smallest possible value of .
Solution
We may as well take and shift the other variables down by to get . Multiplying by its conjugate gives Expanding, we get where . This is the sum of 13 terms, which hints that should form a complete residue class mod 13. We can prove this with the fact that the minimal polynomial of is . The minimum possible value of is 6, as otherwise every difference would be between -5 and 5 mod 13. Take . If then we couldn't form a difference of 3 in , so . Moreover, , so , so is the best possible. Then works. If , and , then , and , so the answer is 7521.
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