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Main Author: Miyazaki, Takafumi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00843
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author Miyazaki, Takafumi
author_facet Miyazaki, Takafumi
contents An important unsolved problem in Diophantine number theory is to establish a general method to effectively find all solutions to any given $S$-unit equation with at least four terms. Although there are many works contributing to this problem in literature, most of which handle purely exponential Diophantine equations, it can be said that all of them only solve finitely many equations in a natural distinction. In this paper, we study infinitely many purely exponential Diophantine equations with four terms of consecutive bases. Our result states that all solutions to the equation $n^x+(n+1)^y+(n+2)^z=(n+3)^w$ in positive integers $n,x,y,z,w$ with $n \equiv 3 \pmod{4}$ are given by $(n,x,y,z,w)=(3,3,1,1,2), (3,3,3,3,3)$. The proof uses elementary congruence arguments developed in the study of ternary case, Baker's method in both rational and $p$-adic cases, and the algorithm of Bertók and Hajdu based on a variant of Skolem's conjecture on purely exponential equations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_00843
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Solving an infinite number of purely exponential Diophantine equations with four terms
Miyazaki, Takafumi
Number Theory
11D61
An important unsolved problem in Diophantine number theory is to establish a general method to effectively find all solutions to any given $S$-unit equation with at least four terms. Although there are many works contributing to this problem in literature, most of which handle purely exponential Diophantine equations, it can be said that all of them only solve finitely many equations in a natural distinction. In this paper, we study infinitely many purely exponential Diophantine equations with four terms of consecutive bases. Our result states that all solutions to the equation $n^x+(n+1)^y+(n+2)^z=(n+3)^w$ in positive integers $n,x,y,z,w$ with $n \equiv 3 \pmod{4}$ are given by $(n,x,y,z,w)=(3,3,1,1,2), (3,3,3,3,3)$. The proof uses elementary congruence arguments developed in the study of ternary case, Baker's method in both rational and $p$-adic cases, and the algorithm of Bertók and Hajdu based on a variant of Skolem's conjecture on purely exponential equations.
title Solving an infinite number of purely exponential Diophantine equations with four terms
topic Number Theory
11D61
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00843