Let be a set of integers such that for each integer , there exists an integer and positive integer such that . What is the smallest possible value of ?
Solution
Work in . Call an element type if and . Also, define an element to be coprime if it is of type , powerful if it is of types , or , and marginal otherwise. Then, note that if if is marginal, then any power of is powerful. Therefore all marginal elements must be in . We claim that all powerful elements are the cube of some marginal element. To show this take a powerful element . In modulo 4 or 25, if is a unit, then since 3 is coprime to both the sizes of and , it is the cube of some element. Otherwise, if is zero then it is the cube of 2 or 5, respectively (since this case happens at least once this means that the constructed cube root is marginal). We now claim that 4 additional elements are needed to generate the coprime elements. To see this, note that since there are primitive roots and 25. Under this isomorphism, one can show that , and generate anything, and that no element in has more than one of these as a multiple. To wrap up, note that there are marginal elements, so 41 elements are needed in total.