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Belarusian Mathematical Olympiad

Belarus number theory

Problem

Find all positive integers such that equation has a solution in integers and .
Solution
Answer: all odd numbers. For there is a solution . For any odd number from the latter equality we can obtain the equality , which means that all odd satisfy the conditions of the problem.

If is even, . But the left side of this equality cannot be equal to 1 modulo 3, since the perfect squares are congruent to 0 or 1 modulo 3. Hence, there are no even numbers satisfying the conditions of the problem.
Final answer
all odd positive integers n

Techniques

Techniques: modulo, size analysis, order analysis, inequalitiesModular Arithmetic