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[Thanks to Gerhard Paseman for helping me reformulate my original question.]

The equation $$ \frac{a^m-1}{a-1}=b^2 $$ was solved by Ljunggren, building on work of Nagell, who showed that if $a>1$, $b>1$, and $m>2$ are integers, there are exactly two (easy to find) solutions. Can the same methods explicitly give all solutions to the following equation? $$ \frac{a^m-1}{a-1}=2b^2 $$ Also, is this worked out anywhere in the literature? (If not, I'm thinking of giving it as a problem to an undergraduate researcher. But if there is some easy way to approach the problem I'd like to know.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Search MathOverflow for Ljunggren. Gerhard "Nagell May Have More Hits" Paseman, 2017.11.07. $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 1:57
  • $\begingroup$ I've asked the same on MSE just recently, see math.stackexchange.com/questions/4247808 $\endgroup$
    – Sil
    Sep 28, 2021 at 11:53

1 Answer 1

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The equation $$ \frac{a^m-1}{a-1}=2b^2 $$ does not have solutions in positive integers for $m>2$ as shown below.

First, notice that $a$ must be odd.

Second, one can see that $m$ must be even. Indeed, if $a\equiv 3\pmod4$, then odd $m$ would produce an odd number in the left-hand side. On the other hand, if $a\equiv 1\pmod4$, then from Theorem 3 of the LTE it follows that $$ \nu_2(m)=\nu_2(\frac{a^m-1}{a-1})=\nu_2(2b^2)>0, $$ i.e. $m$ is even.

Let $m=2k$ where $k>1$. Then $$ \frac{a^m-1}{a-1}=\frac{a^k-1}{a-1}(a^k+1). $$ Since $\gcd(a^k-1,a^k+1)=2$, we have two cases to consider: $\frac{a^k-1}{a-1}=c^2$ or $a^k+1=c^2$ for some $c\mid b$.

In the former case:

  • if $k=2$, we get $(a,c)=(t^2-1,t)$ for any $t$ satisfying $(t^2-1)^2+1=2d^2$ where $d=b/c$. However, it can be computationally verified (e.g., in Magma) that this elliptic curve has the only solution with $t=0$ (giving $a=-1$).

  • if $k>2$, we get Ljunggren equation giving $(k,a,c)=(5,3,11)$ and $(k,a,c)=(4,7,20)$, which however do not produce any solutions to the original equation.

In the latter case, one can refer to Mihailescu's Theorem to obtain the only solution $(k,a,c)=(3,2,3)$, which again does not produce any solutions to the original equation.

Hence, the equation in question does not have any solutions for $m>2$.

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  • $\begingroup$ This is really nice, although it pulls out the big guns by appealing to Mihailescu's theorem! In my work I also need the cases when the right-hand side is $3b^2$ or $6b^2$. It looks like the $6b^2$ case should be similar, but I'll give them a try using your ideas. $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 14:51
  • $\begingroup$ @PaceNielsen: Mihailescu's theorem may be an overkill here, but it's the most straightforward approach. Alternatively, one can get the same result by factoring $a^k=(c-1)(c+1)$. $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 14:57
  • $\begingroup$ If $a$ is odd, than $m$ and $(a^m-1)/(a-1)=1+a+\dots+a^{m-1}$ have the the same parity, we do not need theorems for seeing this. $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 16:15
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    $\begingroup$ $a^k+1=c^2$ was done long before Mihailescu in elementary and short way, see E. Z. Chein, Proc. AMS 56 (1976), pp. 83-84. $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 16:24
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    $\begingroup$ Here is an even easier solution in the latter case: If $k$ is odd, we cannot have $(a^k-1)/(a-1)$ twice a square. But if $k$ is even, then $a^k+1$ cannot be a square, since integer squares are more than one apart (for $a>1$). $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 17:28

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