Is it natural?

For how many ordered pairs of positive integers like ( m , n ) (m,n) the fraction n 2 + 1 m n 1 \frac{n^2+1}{mn-1} becomes a positive integer?

Inspired by problem 4 IMO 1994 and belongs to this set .


The answer is 6.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Kazem Sepehrinia
Mar 10, 2015

First note that if m n 1 n 2 + 1 mn-1|n^2+1 then m n 1 m 2 n 2 1 + n 2 + 1 = n 2 ( m 2 + 1 ) mn-1|m^2n^2-1+n^2+1=n^2(m^2+1) It follows that m n 1 m 2 + 1 mn-1|m^2+1 , so if ( m , n ) (m,n) is an answer ( n , m ) (n,m) will be too.

Let n = 1 n=1 , it gives m = 2 , 3 m=2,3 , we get 4 pairs from here: ( 1 , 2 ) , ( 2 , 1 ) , ( 1 , 3 ) , ( 3 , 1 ) (1,2),(2,1),(1,3),(3,1) Note that if n 2 + 1 m n 1 = r \frac{n^2+1}{mn-1}=r then r 1 mod n r\equiv-1 \ \ \text{mod} \ n , and r r have the form of k n 1 kn-1 for some positive integer k k . There is no answer for m = n m=n therefore we can suppose m > n m>n and we can write k n 1 = n 2 + 1 m n 1 < n 2 + 1 n 2 1 = 1 + 2 n 2 1 < 2 kn-1=\frac{n^2+1}{mn-1}<\frac{n^2+1}{n^2-1}=1+\frac{2}{n^2-1}<2 which follows that k n < 3 kn<3 and n = 2 n=2 this gives us m = 3 m=3 . So we get 2 other solutions from here: ( 2 , 3 ) , ( 3 , 2 ) (2,3),(3,2) Therefore there are 6 such pairs.

Nice solutions, but somewhat hard to follow at times. The presentation of the problem could be made much clearer.

For example, you should have first stated "It can be shown that if n 2 + 1 m n 1 = r \frac{ n^2 + 1 }{ mn-1 } = r , then r = k n 1 r = kn - 1 , instead of introducing that halfway almost as it if is an obvious fact.

Calvin Lin Staff - 6 years, 3 months ago

Log in to reply

Thanks for your attention sir, I tried to make it clearer.

Kazem Sepehrinia - 6 years, 3 months ago

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...