Friday 30 October 2020

3 primes problem

Given prime number pp, how many triples of distinct prime numbers (a,b,c)(a,b,c) are there for a such that aa+bb+cca^a + b^b + c^c is a multiple of pp?

According to diriclet theorem There exist infinite many odd primes for bb and cc such that b1(modp)b \equiv 1 \pmod p and c1(modp)c \equiv -1 \pmod p. If we take aa to be pp, then we get:
aa+bb+cc0a+1b+(1)c(modp)0+1+(1)(modp)0(modp)\begin{aligned}a^a+b^b+c^c &\equiv 0^a+1^b+(-1)^c &\pmod p \\&\equiv 0+1+(-1) &\pmod p \\&\equiv 0&\pmod p \\\end{aligned}
So aa+bb+cca^a + b^b + c^c is a multiple of pp. As there exist infinitly many values for bb and cc, there are infinitly many triples.