Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:17:21.512Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On shifted products which are powers

Part of: Diophantine equations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2010

K. Gyarmati ,
A. Sárközy  and
C. L. Stewart
K. Gyarmati
Affiliation:
Department of Algebra and Number Theory, University Eötvos Loránd, H-1053 Budapest, Hungary, E-mail: [email protected]
A. Sárközy
Affiliation:
Department of Algebra and Number Theory, University Eötvos Loránd, H-1053 Budapest, Hungary. E-mail: [email protected]
C. L. Stewart
Affiliation:
Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3GI. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Extract

Fermat gave the first example of a set of four positive integers {a1, a2, a3, a4} with the property that aiaj+1 is a square for 1≤i<j≤4. His example was {1, 3, 8, 120}. Baker and Davenport [1] proved that the example could not be extended to a set of 5 positive integers such that the product of any two of them plus one is a square. Kangasabapathy and Ponnudurai [6], Sansone [9] and Grinstead [4] gave alternative proofs. The construction of such sets originated with Diophantus who studied the problem when the ai are rational numbers. It is conjectured that there do not exist five positive integers whose pairwise products are all one less than the square of an integer. Recently Dujella [3] proved that there do not exist nine such integers. In this note we address the following related problem. Let V denote the set of pure powers, that is, the set of positive integers of the form xk with x and k positive integers and k>1. How large can a set of positive integers A be if aa′ + 1 is in V whenever a and a′ are distinct integers from A? We expect that there is an absolute bound for |A|, the cardinality of A. While we have not been able to establish this result, we have been able to prove that such sets cannot be very dense.

MSC classification

Secondary: 11D45: Counting solutions of Diophantine equations
Type
Research Article
Information
Mathematika , Volume 49 , Issue 1-2 , June 2002 , pp. 227 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © University College London 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Baker, A. and Davenport, H.. The equations 3x 2 − 2 = y 2 and 8x 2 − 7 = z 2. Quart. J. Math. Oxford Ser. (2) 20 (1969), 129–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Bollobás, B.. Extremal Graph Theory, London Mathematical Society Monographs No. 11. Academic Press, London, New York, San Francisco (1978).Google Scholar
3.Dujella, A.. An absolute bound for the size of Diophantine m-tuples. J. Number Theory 89 (2001), 126–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4.Grinstead, C. M.. On a method of solving a class of Diophantine equations. Math. Comp. 32 (1978), 936–940.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5.Gyarmati, K.. On a problem of Diophantus, Acta Arith., 97 (2001). 53–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.Kangasabapathy, P. and Ponnudurai, T.. The simultaneous Diophantine equations y 2 - 3x 2 = -2 and z 2 - 8x 2 = -7. Quart. J. Math. Oxford Ser. (2) 26 (1975). 275–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Kövári, P., Sós, V. and Turán, P.. On a problem of K. Zarankiewicz. Colloq. Math. 3 (1954). 50–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.Barkley Rosser, J. and Schoenfeld, Lowell. Approximate formulas for some functions of prime numbers. Illinois J. Math. (1962), 64–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9.Sansone, G.. El sistema diofanteo N+ 1 = x 2 3N + 1 =y 2,8N + 1 = Z 2. Ann. Mat. I'ura Appl. (4) 111 (1976), 125–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10.Turán, P.. On an extremal problem in graph theory (in Hungarian). Mat. Fiz. Lapok 48 (1941). 436–452.Google Scholar