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37th Iranian Mathematical Olympiad

Iran number theory

Problem

Let be a natural number. Prove that the following equation has no solution in positive integers numbers greater than 1:
Solution
Assume that is a solution to the equation. Without loss of generality, let . Since is divisible by , we have On the other hand, So, Combining these two facts, we get Since for every index , we have , we'll get Which is obviously wrong for and we're done.

Techniques

Techniques: modulo, size analysis, order analysis, inequalities