Olympiad Maths Prep

Track / Stage 4 / 111 of 340 #371 of 2000

Problem 371

AMC 12 late, AIME early
Number theory Difficulty 4.7 Find the answer

2. Find all pairs of integers (m,n)(m, n) that satisfy the equation nn1=4m2+2m+3n^{n-1}=4 m^{2}+2 m+3.

(Tomáš Jurík)

Official solution

Solution. Clearly, the right-hand side is an odd integer, hence nn1n^{n-1} is also an odd integer which implies that nn is odd, n1n-1 is even and finally nn1n^{n-1} is a square of an integer.

For m>1m>1, the inequalities (2m)24m2+2m+3>(2m+1)2(2 m)^{2}4 m^{2}+2 m+3>(2 m+1)^{2}, so there are no solutions in this case either.

The only remaining options are m{1,0,1}m \in\{-1,0,1\}; by checking each of them we find the only solution (m,n)=(1,3)(m, n)=(1,3).

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic, difficulty and ordering added by this site.