Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Alison Miller
June 30, 2011
1 Warm-up
1 (MOP 00). How many zeroes are there at the end of
6 4
45 + 65 ?
2 Basic Facts
For the purposes of this handout, p is an odd prime.1
Z/pn Z is the set of integers mod p. It has an addition and a multiplication law, furthermore,
any element that is not a multiple of p has a multiplicative inverse. We can consider the subset
Z/pn Z of invertible elements; these are exactly the elements not divisible by p. These form an
abelian group, so we can use the language of group theory here, but we dont need to.
Definition 1. The order mod pn of an element a Z/pn Z is the least d such that ad = 1 mod pn .
Theorem 1. The multiplicative group of Z/pn Z: The multiplicative group of Z/pn Z has order
(pn ) = pn1 (p 1) and is cyclic.
(You should prove this but you may assume that the multiplicative group of Z/pZ is cyclic.)
More useful terminology:
Definition 2. For an integer n define vp (n) = max{a : pa | n}. This is often called the p-adic
valuation of n.
Exercise 1. Show that vp (a + b) min(vp (a), vp (b)).
Theorem 2.
(a + pr b)n = an + npr an1 b (mod p2r ).
mod pn analogue of Taylor Series: If P (x) Z[x], then
p2r b2 P 00 (a) p2r b3 P 000 (a)
P (a + pr b) = P (a) + pr bP 0 (a) + + + .
2! 3!
In particular:
P (a + pr b) = P (a) + pr bP 0 (a) (mod p2r ).
(Again, this sum is finite.)
1
Unless stated otherwise.
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MOP 2011, Black Group Stuff mod pr June 24, 2011
Lemma 1 (Hensels Lemma). For a polynomial P (x) Z[x], if there exists a Z such that
P (a) 0 (mod p), and P 0 (a) 6 0 (mod p), then, for any positive integer k, there exists b Z
with b a (mod p) and P (b) 0 (mod pn ).
The sort of inductive construction used in Hensels Lemma can be useful in other contexts as
well.
Lemma 2 (The Lemma Which is Not Hensels Lemma, a.k.a. Lifting the Exponent). Let p be an
odd prime and n a positive integer.
If vp (a) = vp (b) = 0 and vp (a b) > 0, then vp (an bn ) = vp (a b) + vp (n).
(The prime p = 2 is finicky, so we wont talk about it here. But analogous statements do exist;
can you find them?)
The formula for vp (n!) is useful; it can also be used to find the p-adic valuation of binomial
coefficients.
Theorem 3 (Wolstenholmes theorem:). This is a name given to a number of related facts. Here,
let p be a prime greater than or equal to 5. Then the numerator of
1 1 1
1+ + + +
2 3 p1
is divisible by p.
2p
2 (mod p3 ),
p
and more generally
ap a
(mod p3 ).
bp b
3 Problems
Not all the problems below involve prime powers in their statements, so you may need to focus on
certain primes or apply Chinese Remainder theorem to solve them.
2. (a) Find the smallest integer n with the following property; if p is an odd prime and a is a
primitive root modulo pn , then a is a primitve root modulo every power of p.
(b) Show that 2 is a primitive root modulo 3k and 5k for every positive integer k.
3 (Ireland 1996). Let p be a prime number and a, n positive integers. Prove that if 2p + 3p = an ,
then n = 1.
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MOP 2011, Black Group Stuff mod pr June 24, 2011
4. Find all pairs (m, n) of positive integers, with m, n 2, such that an 1 is divisible by m for
each a {1, 2, . . . , n}.
5 (USA TST). Let p be a prime number greater than 5. For any integer x, define
p1
X 1
fp (x) =
k=1
(px + k)2
Prove that for all positive integers x and y the numerator of fp (x) fp (y), when written in
lowest terms, is divisible by p3 .
6. Show that the equation xn + y n = (x + y)m has a unique solution satisfying x > y, m > 1,
n > 1.
7 (China TST 2004, MOP 2004). Let u be a fixed positive integer. Prove that the equation
n! = u u has a finite number of solutions (n, , ).
8 (IMO Shortlist 2007). For every integer k 2, prove that 23k divides the number
k+1 k
2 2
k
k1
2 2
This is however a suboptimal definition because it turns out that the value of (n!)p mod pn
depends not only on the value of n mod p but also on the parity of p (look at (1!)p versus (p + 1)!p ).
The mathematicians who have thought about this sort of thing have generally worked in terms
of generalizing the function (n) = (n 1)!, so we will use their terminology.
The following definition fixes both those problems.
Definition 4 (Moritas p-adic gamma function). Let
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MOP 2011, Black Group Stuff mod pr June 24, 2011
(The sum above is the sum as i runs through all of the p distinct residues mod p.)
and also X
0 i2k (1 + i)3k (mod p).
i mod p
Where m
n p
should be something defined analogously to (n!)p . (Side note; if you know what
the beta function is, this sort of looks like the integral definition of the beta function.)
(Reality checks you ought to make: Why does it even make sense to consider the left hand side
mod pn , given that i is only defined mod p? Also, you should check that the mod pn results you
are getting for different n are consistent with each other. If you think there is a mistake in this,
send me an e-mail at abmiller@math.princeton.edu. Also I think the a + b n condition may be
unnecessary.)
This should follow from the work of some subset of {Gross-Koblitz, Katz, Dwork} using very
advanced methods. I dont know an olympiad-level proof but am curious if one exists (even one
that only works for special cases).
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MOP 2011, Black Group Stuff mod pr June 24, 2011