Integer Hilbert's 10th Problem: Diophantine Equation
Integer Hilbert's 10th Problem: Diophantine Equation
Integer Hilbert's 10th Problem: Diophantine Equation
and
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(9)
(10)
Continue this procedure all the way back to the top.
Take as an example the equation
(11)
and apply the algorithm above to obtain
(12)
The above procedure can be simplified by noting that the two leftmost columns are
offset by one entry and alternate signs, as they must since
(13)
(14)
(15)
so the coefficients of
and
(18)
and . If the signs in front of
or
are negative, then solve the above equation
and take the signs of the solutions from the following table:
equation
so one solution is
with an arbitrary integer. The solution in terms of smallest positive integers is given by
choosing an appropriate .
Now consider the general first-order equation of the form
(23)
The greatest common divisor
where
,
, and
. If
, then is not an integer and the equation
cannot have a solution in integers. A necessary and sufficient condition for the general
first-order equation to have solutions in integers is therefore that
. If this is the case,
then solve
(25)
and multiply the solutions by , since
(26)
D. Wilson has compiled a list of the smallest th powers of positive integers that are the
sums of the th powers of distinct smaller positive integers. The first few are 3, 5, 6, 15,
12, 25, 40, ...(Sloane's A030052):
(27)
(28)
(29)
(30)
(31)
(32)
(33)
(34)
(35)
Case 1: n = 2
If the linear Diophantine equations has only two variables (n = 2), extended Euclids algorithmcan be
used to find the solutions. If solvable, we will have to introduce one parameter. The general form of
the equation when n = 2 can be expressed as ax + by = c. This is solvable if and only if gcd(a, b)
divides c. i.e gcd(c, gcd(a, b)) = gcd(a, b). Here gcd stands for greatest common
divisor. Let x0 and y0 be a solution, then it can be easily noticed that, x0 + bt and y0 -at are also
solutions. We can use this fact to find all the solutions when an initial solution has been found.
Solution of 10x + 14y = 10
We start by dividing both sides of the equation by gcd(a, b). If gcd(a, b) does not divide c, then there
are no solutions. gcd(4, 6) = 2 and 2 divides 10 so this is solvable and dividing by 2 yields,5x + 7y =
5. Now we should apply extended Euclids algorithm. What the algorithm does is finding three
values x0, y0 and d such that ax0 + by0 = d. Here d = gcd(a, b). Since we divided the equation
by gcd(a, b) at the very beginning, d will always be 1 in our case. Below is a simplified version of the
algorithm used in the solver.
def extended_euclid(a, b):
if b == 0:
return (1, 0, a)
else:
x0, y0, d = extended_euclid(b, a%b)
x, y = y0, x0 (a//b) * y0
return x, y, d
extended_euclid(5, 7) returns (3, -2 , 1), i.e 5*3 7*2 = 1. Following is the procedure if you were
work this out manually.
7 = 5*1 + 2
5 = 2*2 + 1
2 = 1*2 + 0
Now starting from the line before the last one we can start going back, 1 = 5 2*2 = 5 2*(7 5*1) =
3*5 2*7 which gives the desired result. Multiplying 5*3 +7*(-2) = 1 by 5 we get 5*15 +7*(-10) =
5 which implies that 15 and -10 are solutions of the initial equation. So all the solutions can be
expressed as, x = 15+7t, y = -10-5t where t is an integer.
Case 2: n > 2
If n > 2, we can express two of the variables using the rest of the variables and a parameter. Below
is an example for this case.
Solution of 2x + 3y + 4z = 5
Lets set x = x and assume y = ax + bm + c and z = dx + em + f where a, b, c, d, e, f are constants to
be found. m is the introduced parameter. Plug in these in original equation,
2x + 3(ax + bm + c) + 4(dx + em + f) = 5
By comparing the two sides we get the set of equations, 3c + 4f = 5, 2 + 3a + 4d = 0 and 3b + 4e =
0 all of which are two variable linear DEs. If these can be solved, these will yield infinite number of
solutions and any pair of values will be acceptable for (a, d), (b, e) and (c, f). In this example all three
equations are solvable and (a, d) = (2, -2) , (b, e) = (4, -3) and (e, f) = (3, -1)would do the trick. Then
the general solution is, x = x, y = 2x + 4m + 3 and z = -2x 3m 1
In the solver module when more than two variables are involved it is rearranged leaving two variable
in one side and all the other variables and constant term in the other side. For example2x + 3y + 4z
= 5 is assumed to be in the form 2x + 3y = 5 4z. Then it finds a separate solution for each of the
two equations 2x + 3y = 5 >(1) and 2x + 3y = -4z >(2). First equation returns a parametric
solution as discussed in case 1 and the solutions for second one can be found by finding a basic
solution(not parametric) for 2x + 3y = -4 and multiplying it by z. Adding the two solutions
for (1) and (2) yields the solution of the original equation.
Diophantine equations
A diophantine equation is an equation where only integer
solutions are accepted. This implies that diophantine
equations becomes harder (or even impossible) to solve than
equations that do not have this restriction. We will show that
diophantine equations of the type
that is
such that
that is
such that