Rational input, integer output

Consider the following polynomial equation [source: Berkeley Problems in Mathematics, problem 6.13.10]:

Let’s try to figure out the rational values of for which is an integer. Clearly, if then is an integer. So let’s consider the case when where and . Substituting this value of we get:

Since, we conclude that . Also it’s clear that . Hence, and we just need to find the possible values of .

For we get:

Hence we have . Since , we have , that is, .

Similarly, for we get . Hence we conclude that the non-integer values of which lead to integer output are:

for all

 

Number Theory

I read the term “number theory” for the first time in 2010, in this book (for RMO preparation):

This term didn’t make any sense to me then. More confusing was the entry in footer “Number of Theory”. At that time I didn’t have much access to internet to clarify the term, hence never read this chapter. I still like the term “arithmetic” rather than “number theory” (though both mean the same).

Yesterday, following article in newspaper caught my attention:

article: HT – How a Congress-BSP pact can be a game changer in MP, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh

The usage of this term makes sense here!

Sum of squares

In the past few posts, I have talked about representing integers as a sum of squares:

• Fermat’s two-square theorem
• Legendre’s three-square theorem
• Algorithms for finding the sum of squares representation

In this post, I would like to state Lagrange’s four-square theorem following section 6.4 of Niven-Zuckerman-Montgomery’s An introduction to the theory of number.

Firstly, by applying Hensel’s lemma to the result from the earlier post we get (Theorem 5.14):

Proposition: Let be arbitrary integers. Then the congruence has a non-trivial solution modulo any prime .

The theorem stated in the earlier post establishes that there is no need for any condition modulo primes p not dividing abc. The above proposition, application of Hensel’s lemma, just demonstrates it more explicitly by telling that the equation is solvable everywhere locally (i.e. modulo every prime).

Secondly, we need following result from Geometry of numbers (Theorem 6.21):

Minkowski’s Convex Body Theorem for general lattices: Let be a non-singular matrix with real elements, and let be a lattice. If is a set in that is convex, symmetric about origin , and if , then there exists a lattice point such  that and .

Now we are ready to state the theorem (for the proof see Theorem 6.26):

Lagrange’s four-square theorem: Every positive integer can be expressed as the sum of four squares, , where are non-negative integers.

Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture

This is part of the 6 unsolved Millennium Problems. Following is a beautiful exposition of the statement and consequences of this conjecture:

Anybody with high-school level knowledge can benefit from this video.

Nim

Nim is a very old game with precise mathematical theory, and one player can always force a win.

The game is Nim is played as follows: Any number of matches/pebbles are arranged in heaps, the number of heaps and the number matches/pebbles in each heap, being arbitrary.  There are two players, A and B. The first player A takes any number of matches/pebbles from a heap, he/she may take only one or any number up to the whole of the heap, but he/she must touch one heap only. B then makes a move conditioned similarly, and the players continue to take alternate turns of picking matches/pebbles. The player who takes the last match/pebble wins the game.

We define a winning position as a position such that if one player P (A or B) can secure it by his/her move, leaving his/her opponent Q (B or A) to move next, then, whatever Q may do, P can play so as to win the game. Any other position we call a losing position.

Next, we express the number of matches in each heap in the binary scale and form a figure by writing down one under the other. Then we add up the columns. For example, consider the following position:

Then, (1,3,5,7) position gives the following figure:

001
011
101
111
—
224

If the sum of each column is even (which is the case above), then the position is correct. An incorrect position is one which is not correct, thus (1,3,4) is incorrect.

Then we have the following result:

A position in Nim is a winning position if and only if it is correct.

For the proof/discussion/variations of rules, see § 9.8, of G. H. Hardy and E. M. Wright’s An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers.

But designing an elaborate winning strategy, i.e. ensuring that you always stay in winning position, is not so easy (though we know it exists!). For example, watch this video by Matt Parker:

Farey Dissection

The Farey sequence of order is the ascending sequence of irreducible fractions between 0 and 1, whose denominators do not exceed . This sequence was discovered by Charles Haros in 1806, but Augustin-Louis Cauchy named it after geologist John Farey.

Thus belongs to  if and , the numbers 0 and 1 are included in the forms and . For example,

Following are the  characteristic properties of Farey sequence (for proofs refer §3.3, §3.4 and §3.7 of G. H. Hardy and E. M. Wright’s An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers):

1. If and  are two successive terms of , then .
2. If ,  and  are three successive terms of , then .
3. If and  are two successive terms of , then the mediant  of  and  falls in the interval .
4. If , then no two successive terms of  have the same denominator.

The Stern-Brocot tree, which we saw earlier while understanding the working of clocks, is a data structure showing how the sequence is built up from 0 (=0/1) and 1 (=1/1) by taking successive mediants.

Now, consider a circle of unit circumference, and an arbitrary point of the circumference as the representative of 0 (zero), and represent a real number by the point whose distance from , measured round the circumference in the anti-clockwise direction, is .

Plainly all integers are represented by the same point , and numbers which differ by an integer have the same representative point.

Now we will divide the circumference of the circle in the following manner:

1. We take the Farey sequence , and form all the mediants of the successive pairs , . The first and last mediants are and . The mediants naturally do not belong themselves to .
2. We now represent each mediant by the point . The circle is thus divided up into arcs which we call Farey arcs, each bounded by two points and containing  one Farey point, the representative of a term of . Thus is a Farey arc containing the one Farey point .

The aggregate of Farey arcs is called Farey dissection of the circle. For example, the sequence of mediants for , say is

And hence the Farey disscetion looks like:

Let . If is a Farey point, and, are the terms of which precede and follow , then the Farey arc around  is composed of two parts, whose lengths are

respectively. Now , since and are unequal (using the point (4.) stated above)and neither exceeds ; and (using the point (3.) stated above). We thus obtain:

Theorem: In the Farey dissection of order , there , each part of the arc which contains the representative has a length between and .

For example, for we have:

Using the above result, one can prove the following result about rational approximations (for more discussion, see §6.2 of  Niven-Zuckerman-Montgomery’s An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers):

Theorem: If is a real number, and a positive integer, then there is an irriducible fraction such that and

One can construct a geometric proof of Kronceker’s theorem in one dimension using this concept of Farey dissection. See §23.2 of G. H. Hardy and E. M. Wright’s An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers  for details.

Geometry & Arithmetic

A couple of weeks ago I discussed a geometric solution to an arithmetic problem. In this post, I will discuss an arithmetical solution to a geometry problem. Consider the following question:

Given a square whose sides are reflecting mirrors. A ray of light leaves a point inside the square and is reflected repeatedly in the mirrors. What is the nature of its paths?

It may happen that the ray passes through a corner of the square. In that case, we assume that it returns along its former path.

In figure, the parallels to the axis are the lines, and , where and are integers. The thick square, of side 1, around the origin is the square of the problem and is the starting point. We construct all images of in the mirrors, for direct or repeated reflection. One can observe that they are of four types, the coordinates of the images of the different types being

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 

where and are arbitrary integers. Further, if the velocity at has direction cosines, , then the corresponding images of the velocity have direction cosines

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 

where we suppose (on the grounds of symmetry) that is positive. If we think of the plane as divided into squares of unit side, then interior of a typical square being

then each squares contains just one image of every point in the original sqaure, given by (shown by the bold points in the figure). And if the image in any of the above squares of any point in the original sqaure is of type (1.), (2.), (3.) or (4.), then the image in any of the above squares of any other point in the original square is of the same type.

We can now imagine moving with the ray (shown by dotted lines in the figure). When the point meets the mirror, it coincides with an image and the image of which momentarily coincides with continues the motion of , in its original direction, in one of the squares adjacent to the fundamental square (the thick square). We follow the motion of the image, in this square, until it in its turn it meets a side of the square. Clearly, the original path of will be continued indefinitely in the same line (dotted line in the figure), by a series of different images.

The segment of in any square (for a given and ) is the image of a straight portion of the path of in the original square. There is one-to-one correspondence between the segments of , in different squares, and the portions of the path of between successive reflections, each segment of being an image of the corresponding portion of the path of .

The path of in the original square will be periodic if returns to its original position moving in the same direction; and this will happen if and only if passes through an image of type (1.) of the original . The coordinates of an arbitrary point of are .

Hence the path will be periodic if and only if , for some and integral , i.e. if  is rational.

When is irrational, then the path of approaches arbitrarily near to every point of the sqaure. This follows directly from Kronecker’s Theorem in one dimension (see § 23.3 of G H. Hardy and E. M. Wright’s An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers.):

[Kronecker’s Theorem in one dimension] If is irrational, is arbitrary, and and are positive, then there are integers and such that and .

Here, we have and , with large enough integers and . Hence we can conclude that

[König-Szücs Theorem]Given a square whose sides are reflecting mirrors. A ray of light leaves a point inside the square and is reflected repeatedly in the mirrors. Either the path is closed and periodic or it is dense in the square, passing arbitrarily near to every point of the square. A necessary and sufficient condition for the periodicity is that the angle between a side of the square and the initial direction of the ray should have a rational tangent.

Another way of stating the above Kronecker’s theorem is

[Kronecker’s Theorem in one dimension] If is irrational, then the set of points is dense in the interval .

Then with some knowledge of Fourier series, we can try to answer a more general question

Given an irrational number , what can be said about the distribution of the fractional parts of the sequence of numbers , for ?

The answer to this question is called Weyl’s Equidistribution Theorem (see §4.2 of  Elias M. Stein & Rami Shakarchi’s Fourier Analysis: An Introduction)

[Weyl’s Equidistribution Theorem] If is irrational, then the sequence of fractional parts is equidistributed in .

I really enjoyed reading about this unexpected link between geometry and arithmetic (and Fourier analysis). Most of the material has been taken/copied from Hardy’s book. The solution to the geometry problem reminds me of the solution to the Cross Diagonal Cover  Problem.

Arithmetic & Geometry

After a month of the unexpected break from mathematics, I will resume the regular weekly blog posts. It’s a kind of relaunch of this blog, and I  will begin with the discussion of an arithmetic problem with a geometric solution.  This is problem 103 from  The USSR Olympiad Problem Book:

Prove that

where is the number of divisors of the natural number .

One can solve this problem by using the principle of mathematical induction or using the fact that the number of integers of the sequence which are divisible by any chosen integer is equal to . The second approach of counting suggests an elegant geometric solution.

Consider the equilateral hyperbola , (of which we shall take only the branches in the first quadrant):

We note all the points in the first quadrant which have integer coordinates as the intersection point of the dotted lines. Now, if an integer is a divisor of the integer , then the point is a point on the graph of the hyperbola . Conversely, if the hyperbola contains an integer point, then the x-coordinate is a divisor of . Hence the number of integers is  equal to the number of the integer points lying on the hyperbola . The number is thus equal to the number of absciassas of integer points lying on the hyperbola . Now, we make use of the fact that the hyperbola lies “farther out” in the quadrant than do . The following implication hold:

The sum is equal to the number of integer points lying under or on the hyperbola . Each such point will lie on a hyperbola , where . The number of integer points with abscissa located under the hyperbola is equal to the integer part of the length of the segment [in figure above ]. That is , since , i.e. ordinate of point on hyperbola for abscissa . Thus, we obtain

Caution: Excess of anything is harmful, even mathematics. 

Triangles and Rectangles

Consider the following question by Bill Sands (asked in 1995):

Are there right triangles with integer sides and area, associated with rectangles having the same perimeter and area?

Try to test your intuition. The solution to this problem is NOT so simple. The solution was published by Richard K. Guy in 1995: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2974502 

If you have a simpler solution, please write it in a comment below. Even I don’t understand much of the solution.

Under 40

The age of 40 is considered special in mathematics because it’s an ad-hoc criterion for deciding whether a mathematician is young or old. This idea has been well established by the under-40 rule for Fields Medal, based on Fields‘ desire that:

while it was in recognition of work already done, it was at the same time intended to be an encouragement for further achievement on the part of the recipients and a stimulus to renewed effort on the part of others

Though it must be noted that this criterion doesn’t claim that after 40 mathematicians are not productive (example: Yitang Zhang).  So I wanted to write a bit about the under 40 leading number theorists which I am aware of (in order of decreasing age):

• Sophie Morel: The area of mathematics in which Morel has already made contributions is called the Langlands program, initiated by Robert Langlands. Langlands brought together two fields, number theory and representation theory. Morel has made significant advances in building that bridge. “It’s an extremely exciting area of mathematics,” Gross says, “and it requires a vast background of knowledge because you have to know both subjects plus algebraic geometry.” [source]
• Melanie Wood: Profiled at age 17 as “The Girl Who Loved Math” by Discover magazine, Wood has a prodigious list of successes. The main focus of her research is in number theory and algebraic geometry, but it also involves work in probability, additive combinatorics, random groups, and algebraic topology.  [source1, source2]
• James Maynard:  James is primarily interested in classical number theory, in particular, the distribution of prime numbers. His research focuses on using tools from analytic number theory, particularly sieve methods, to study primes.  He has established the sensational result that the gap between two consecutive primes is no more than 600 infinitely often. [source1, source2]
• Peter Scholze: Scholze began doing research in the field of arithmetic geometry, which uses geometric tools to understand whole-number solutions to polynomial equations that involve only numbers, variables and exponents. Scholze’s key innovation — a class of fractal structures he calls perfectoid spaces — is only a few years old, but it already has far-reaching ramifications in the field of arithmetic geometry, where number theory and geometry come together. Scholze’s work has a prescient quality, Weinstein said. “He can see the developments before they even begin.” [source]