连续正整数的乘积不是方幂英文版.pdfVIP

THE PRODUCT OF CONSECUTIVE INTEGERS IS NEVER A POWER BY P. ERD6S AND J. L. SELFRIDGE We dedicate this paper to the memory of our friends H. Davenport, Ju.V. Linnik, L. J. Mordell, L. Moser, A. Rnyi and W. Sierpiski, all of whom were alive when we started our work in 1966 at the University of Illinois at Urbana. 0. Introduction It was conjectured about 150 years ago that the product of consecutive integers is never a power. That is, the equation (n + 1)’ (n + k)-- x’ (1) has no solution in integers with k 2, l 2 and n 0. (These restrictions on k, I and n will be implicit throughout this paper.) The early literature on this subject can be found in Dickson’s history and the somewhat later literature in the paper of Oblfith [5]. Rigge [-6-], and a few months later Erd6s [1], proved the conjecture for I 2. Later these two authors ]-1] proved that for fixed l there are at most finitely many solutions to (1). In 1940, Erd6s and Siegel jointly proved that there is an absolute constant c such that (1) has no solutions with k c, but this proof was never published. Later Erd6s [2] found a different proof; by improving the method used, we can now completely establish the old conjecture. Thus we shall prove: THEOREM 1. The product of two or more consecutive positive integers is never a power. In fact we shall prove a stronger result: THEOREM 2. Let k, l, n be integers such that k 3, 2 and n + k pt), where pt) is the least prime satisfying pt) k. Then there is a prime p kfor which v 0 (modl), where is the power ofp dividing (n + 1)...(n + k). Theorem 2 implies Theorem 1, since it is easy to see that (n + 1)(n + 2)is never an/th power and if n k then by Bertrand’s postulate the largest prime fac