DIOPHANTINE EQUATIONS

(IOQM/PRMO)
LINEAR COMBINATIONS

A Diophantine equation in the form is known as a linear combination. If

two relatively prime integers and are written in this form with , the equation
will have an infinite number of solutions. More generally, there will always be an infinite
number of solutions when . If , then there are no solutions to
the equation. To see why, consider the equation . is a
divisor of the LHS (also notice that must always be an integer). However, will
never be a multiple of , hence, no solutions exist.
Now consider the case where . Thus, . If and are relatively prime,
then all solutions are obviously in the form for all integers . If they are not,
we simply divide them by their greatest common divisor.

PYTHAGOREAN TRIPLETS
A Pythagorean triple is a set of three integers that satisfy the Pythagorean
Theorem, . There are three main methods of finding Pythagorean triples:

1) Method of Pythagoras

If is an odd number, then is a Pythagorean triple.

2) If , is a Pythagorean triple.
3) For any , we have is a Pythagorean triple.

SUM OF FOURTH POWERS

A equation of form has no integer solutions, as follows: We assume that
the equation does have integer solutions, and consider the solution which minimizes .
Let this solution be . If then their GCD must satsify

. The solution would then be a solution less than , which contradicts

our assumption. Thus, this equation has no integer solutions.
If , we then proceed with casework, in .
Note that every square, and therefore every fourth power, is either or . The
proof of this is fairly simple, and you can show it yourself.
Case 1:
This would imply , a contradiction.

Case 2:
This would imply , a contradiction since we assumed .

Case 3: , and
We also know that squares are either or . Thus, all fourth powers are
either or .

By similar approach, we show that:

, so .
This is a contradiction, as implies is odd,
and implies is even. QED [Oops, this doesn't work. 21 (or )
are equal to and not even...]
PELL EQUATION
A Pell equation is a type of Diophantine equation in the
form for natural number . The solutions to the Pell equation
when is not a perfect square are connected to the continued fraction expansion
of . If is the period of the continued fraction and is the th
convergent, all solutions to the Pell equation are in the
form for positive integer .
METHOD OF SOLVING
1) Note that any linear combination can be transformed into the linear

equation , which is just the slope-intercept equation for a line. The

solutions to the diophantine equation correspond to lattice points that lie on the

line. For example, consider the equation or . One

solution is (0,1). If you graph the line, it's easy to see that the line intersects
a lattice point as x and y increase or decrease by the same multiple of and ,
respectively (wording?). Hence, the solutions to the equation may be
written parametrically (if we think of as a "starting
point").
2) Sometimes, modular arithmetic can be used to prove that no solutions to a given
Diophantine equation exist. Specifically, if we show that the equation in question
is never true mod , for some integer , then we have shown that the equation
is false. However, this technique cannot be used to show that solutions to a
Diophantine equation do exist.
 3) Sometimes, when a few solutions have been found, induction can be used to find
a family of solutions. Techniques such as infinite Descent can also show that no
solutions to a particular equation exist, or that no solutions outside of a particular
family exist.
4) It is natural to ask whether there is a general solution for Diophantine equations,
i.e., an algorithm that will find the solutions for any given Diophantine equations.
This is known as Hilbert's tenth problem. The answer, however, is no
5) . is known as Fermat's Last Theorem for the condition . In
the 1600s, Fermat, as he was working through a book on Diophantine Equations,
wrote a comment in the margins to the effect of "I have a truly marvelous proof of
this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." Fermat actually made
many conjectures and proposed plenty of "theorems," but wasn't one to write
down the proofs or much other than scribbled comments. After he died, all his
conjectures were re-proven (either false or true) except for Fermat's Last
Theorem. After over 350 years of failing to be proven, the theorem was finally
proven by Andrew Wiles after he spent over 7 years working on the 200-page
proof, and another year fixing an error in the original proof.

PROBLEMS
▪ Q1) Two farmers agree that pigs are worth dollars and that goats are
worth dollars. When one farmer owes the other money, he pays the debt in pigs
or goats, with "change" received in the form of goats or pigs as necessary. (For
example, a dollar debt could be paid with two pigs, with one goat received in
change.) What is the amount of the smallest positive debt that can be resolved in
this way?

SOL-The problem can be restated as an equation of the

form , where is the number of pigs, is the number of
goats, and is the positive debt. The problem asks us to find the
lowest x possible. and must be integers which makes the equation
a Diophantine equation. Bezout’s Identity tells us that the smallest for the
Diophantine equation to have solutions is when is the greatest
common divisor of and . Therefore, the answer is , which
is ,

Q2) Let be a polynomial with integer coefficients that

satisfies and Given that has two
distinct integer solutions and find the product

SOL-We know that so has two distinct solutions

so is at least quadratic. Let us first try this problem out as if is a
quadratic polynomial.
Thus because
where are all integers.
Thus where are all integers. We know
that or and or . By
doing we obtain
 that or or .
Thus . Now we know
that , we
have or which
makes .
Thus . By Vieta's formulas, we
know that the sum of the roots( ) is equal to 41 and the product of the roots( ) is

equal to . Because the roots are integers has to be an integer,

so . Thus the product of the roots is equal to
one of the following: . Testing every
potential product of the roots, we find out that the only product that can have
divisors that sum up to is

Q3) Determine the maximum value of , where and are integers

satisfying and .

SOL-We first observe that since , and are relatively prime. In

addition, we note that , since if we had ,
then would be the sum of two negative integers
and therefore less than . We now observe
,
i.e., is a solution iff is also a solution. Therefore, for a
solution , we can perform the Euclidean algorithm to reduce it eventually to a
solution . It is easy to verify that if is a positive integer, it must be either 2 or 1.
Thus by trivial induction, all the positive integer solutions are of the form ,
where the are the Fibonacci numbers. Simple calculation reveals and to
be the greatest Fibonacci numbers less than ,
giving as the maximal value.
Q4) Solve in integers the equation
SOL- TRY YOURSELF
Q5) Given that t and are positive integers, find the smallest value of

SOL-This Can be reduced to pell fermat equation

Substitute

The fundamental solution for (X,y) is (7,1)

And