Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 4 / 180 of 340 #920 of 2444

Problem 920

AMC 12 late, AIME early
Combinatorics Difficulty 4.8 Prove it Berkeley Math Circle: Monthly Contest 2 · United States

Show that for sufficiently large primes pp, there is an Eulerian circuit on the complete graph with pp vertices that does not contain any cycles of length at most 20232023.

This one wants a proof. Work it on paper, then read the official solution and mark yourself. Be honest about it: the record is only any use to you if it is.

Next problem →

Official solution

Solution:
Take a generator g(modp)g \pmod{p} so that gg is not equivalent to anything of the form a/b-a / b for integers a,b2023a, b \leq 2023. For big enough primes, such a gg must exist as there are at most a constant number of such fractions.

Now number the vertices with the residues mod p\bmod\ p. For any residue r(modp)r \pmod{p}, consider the sequence of vertices PrP_{r} formed by the multiples of rr, starting from rr and ending at pr0(modp)p r \equiv 0 \pmod{p}. We claim that the concatenation of P1,Pg,Pg2,P_{1}, P_{g}, P_{g^{2}}, \ldots works.

Clearly no PrP_{r} contains a cycle. Thus, if a cycle were to exist, it would have to be formed by the end of one PP and the start of another. In other words, we would have cgi+1(pd)gi(modp)c g^{i+1} \equiv (p-d) g^{i} \pmod{p} for c+d2023c+d \leq 2023. However, this is impossible by choice of gg.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty, ordering) added by this project.