Example 7 (2003 British Mathematical Olympiad) Find all positive integers satisfying .
Translate the above text into English, please keep the original text's line breaks and format, and output the translation result directly.
Example 7 (2003 British Mathematical Olympiad) Find all positive integers satisfying .
Translate the above text into English, please keep the original text's line breaks and format, and output the translation result directly.
Without loss of generality, assume , then the original equation becomes .
Since the three terms in the above equation are integers, it follows that .
Since each term on the right side is a positive integer, their sum is at least 3. Therefore, , and is even. Thus, and have exactly one term that is odd.
(1) Assume is odd, then either , or and is odd, .
(i) If , then ,
When , we have ,
When , since , so
or (otherwise ).
or ,
or ,
When or 5, it does not satisfy (1).
When , it is clear that the left side of (1) is greater than the right side, so the original equation has no solution.
(ii) If , where is even,
then the original equation becomes ,
Taking both sides modulo gives .
Since is odd, is even, hence .
Thus, , which is a contradiction.
(2) Assume is even, is odd, then or ( is even).
(i) If , then the equation becomes ,
So . Hence .
Thus , which is a contradiction.
(ii) If , then the equation becomes .
So .
Since , it follows that .
Since is even, so , which is impossible.
In conclusion, the original equation has a unique solution .