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Czech-Polish-Slovak Match

number theory

Problem

Determine all pairs of integers satisfying the equation
Solution
The considered equation is equivalent to The expression above must be a perfect square. Therefore we have either (and ), or , where and ; indeed, if for some prime and nonnegative integer the number divides but does not, then we have , so and . We will consider three cases separately.

The case of . Then we have for some integer , or, equivalently, a contradiction modulo .

The case of . Then for some integer , which leads to We easily check that is the only solution of this equation (we simply consider all possible decompositions: , etc, and take into account the fact that ). Therefore, we obtain two solutions of the original equation: .

The case of . As before, we have , which is equivalent to and we check all possibilities with : for there are no solutions. If , then we obtain , which leads to , which gives two solutions: . Finally, for we arrive at and , which gives .

Therefore, the set of solutions is as follows: $$ \{(6, 3), (6, -9), (1, 1), (1, -2), (2, -1)\}.
Final answer
{(6, 3), (6, -9), (1, 1), (1, -2), (2, -1)}

Techniques

Techniques: modulo, size analysis, order analysis, inequalitiesFactorization techniquesPolynomial operations