By that I mean is there one and only one positive, non-zero whole number pair of x and y, x < y solving the equation x^2 + y^2 = z^2 ?
The reason I wonder is to see what the maximum number of points (x,y) where x and y are natural numbers there can be on a circle with center at the origin. So far the highest is 12 with the smallest such circle having radius 5. And if there are no pairs of pytagorean triples with the same hypotenuse then 12 appears to be the max.
I’ve read your second paragraph several times and cannot understand what you mean, but for your first paragraph there are an infinite number of unique Pythagoran triples.
Dammit! I meant to include “for each z”.
I can’t understand the second paragraph either, but the first appears to be asking if for any integer Z, are there multiple pairs of integers x and y such that x2 + y2 = z2? i.e. If z = 150, maybe either x = 120 and y = 80 would work but also the squares of x = 110 and y = 90 would also add up to the square of 150. (Although this is quite obviously not the case.)
To clarify the last part. A circle with center at the origin and radius one goes through the points (0, 1), (1, 0), (0, -1) and (-1, 0). One with radius sqrt(2) goes through (1, 1) and the three other versions in the four other quadrants. Continuing we get:
radius – points
Sqrt(5) – (1, 2) and (2, 1) times four quadrants
Sqrt(8) – (2, 2) times four quadrants
____3 – (0, 3) times four
Sqrt(10) – (1, 3) times four
and so on, up to
____5 – (0, 5), (3, 4) and 4, 3) times four quadrants.
And as far as I can tell that’s it, unless there are pytagorean-friends with the same z.
Certainly not, if I understand you correctly.
One counterexample will demonstrate this. the Pythagorean triple
7, 24, 25
is one of those cases where the long leg and the hypoteneuse differ by one.
But the triple
15, 20, 25
also has a hypoteneuse of 25.
Yet 7 and 24 aren’t multiples of 15 and 20 (the 15, 20, 25 is clearly a 5 X multiple of the basic and familiar Pythagorean triple 3, 4, 5). in fact, since 24 and 25 differ by only one, that tiple is obviously not a multiple of anything.
There are LOTS of such triples with the same hypoteneuse, but with shorter legs that are not at all similar. I can generate plenty of them using simple formulas for the triples.
I don’t believe there is such a maximum.
Suppose on the contrary that the maximum number of natural number points on an origin-centered circle is N. You can generate N+1 rational points on the unit circle by finding the intersections with the unit circle of lines through (-1,0) with different rational slopes. (That the rational numbers are dense helps with this construction.) Once you have these N+1 points, take the least common denominator, D, of the coordinates thereby obtained, and dilate the unit circle by factor D. Then you have N+1 points with integer coordinates on an origin-centered circle (of possibly very large radius).
Looking over a list of Pythagorean triples, I see (17,144,145) and (24,143,145), both of which are primitive. Plus, for these (or any others whose largest number is a multiple of 5) you could “scale up” (3,4,5), as CalMeacham did.
A bit of googling turned up “Schinzel’s theorem shows that for every positive integer n, there exists a circle in the plane having exactly n lattice points on its circumference.”
Excellent. I thought it would be easy to prove my idea wrong, but couldn’t find the counterproofs in the first few places I looked.
Although related, this is not directly applicable, as Schinzel’s theorem allows for circles not centered at the origin.
For a positive integer z, the number of positive integer solutions to x[sup]2[/sup] + y[sup]2[/sup] = z[sup]2[/sup] with x < y is (k - 1)/2, where k is the product of (2e + 1) over every exponent e in the prime factorization of z associated to a prime with remainder 1 when dividing by 4.
That may seem ridiculous, but it’s true. It has, as a consequence, that suitable choices of z allow for arbitrarily many solutions.
For example, the prime factorization of 25 is 5[sup]2[/sup], which has just one prime in it with remainder 1 when dividing by 4 (that prime being 5), whose corresponding exponent is 2. Thus, k = (2 * 2 + 1) = 5, and the number of solutions with z = 25 becomes (5 - 1)/2 = 2. (Precisely the 2 solutions listed by CalMeacham earlier). More generally, taking z to be 5[sup]n[/sup] will yield precisely n many solutions.
I will write up the proof of this fact, in case anyone is interested, but it will be somewhat lengthy.
:smack: You’re right, as should have been obvious if I’d looked at my own link a little closer. Further down it does discuss circles centered at the origin, and gives essentially the same answer you did. And by following its link I found this table showing the number of integer solutions to x[sup]2[/sup] + y[sup]2[/sup] = z[sup]2[/sup]; divide by 4 to get only those with positive x and y.
Promised proof (cobbled together from previous writing such as this, tailored to current situation, but with no effort on doing superscript formatting, or picking best variable names, or any such thing, because I’m lazy and have more important work to do (yet I am clearly here procrastinating)):
A Pythagorean triple is a triple of integers A, B, and C such that A^2 + B^2 = C^2. (It’ll be convenient for now to allow these to be negative; we can cull those later). We’re looking to determine how many ways we can write C^2 as a sum of two squares. In fact, even for values K which aren’t square numbers, we might ask how many ways they can be written as a sum of two squares. (Of course, the answer will be 0 for negative K, and, just as trivially, 1 if K is zero. In the following, K is always presumed positive.)
It turns out there’s another convenient way to think about all this: by a “Gaussian integer”, I mean a complex number of the form A + iB with A and B both integers.
A Pythagorean triple of hypotenuse C is a Gaussian integer of magnitude C; we might also just ask for its squared magnitude to be K, whether or not K is the square of an integer.
The benefit of looking at things this way is that Gaussian integers have a structure very similar to ordinary integers. In particular, they come with a notion of prime factorization very similar to that for ordinary integers.
To see this, let’s review how prime factorization works:
Let’s call two integers “similar” if each is a multiple of the other (so, e.g., x and -x are similar; note that similar values have the same size). From now on, except where otherwise specified, I will not distinguish between similar values; they’re as good as equal to me.
We say a nonzero integer p is “prime” if any way of expressing it as a product of integers involves a factor of p. (Note that 1 (or any value similar to 1; aka, any “unit”) is not considered prime because of the empty product.)
By repeatedly breaking any particular nonzero integer into a product of smaller integers, if possible, and stopping when reaching primes, we find that every nonzero integer has some representation as a product of primes. (Note that this factorization process cannot go on forever, by consideration of how sizes get smaller at each stage)
Not only that, but this representation is unique. (This follows from the fact that if a prime divides a product, it divides one of the product’s factors. This in turn follows from the fact that arithmetic modulo a prime forms a field (that is, if prime p does not divide x, there is some multiple of x which is 1 plus a multiple of p). This follows from the fact that any two (or, indeed, finitely many) values have a greatest common divisor which is a sum of multiples of those values (in particular, the GCD of a prime and any value it does not divide will be 1). This follows from running the extended Euclidean algorithm, which makes use of a “division and remainder (smaller than the divisor)” operator, whose existence just depends on the fact that any ratio of integers has distance less than 1 from some integer. Again, this algorithm cannot go on forever by consideration of how sizes get smaller at each stage)
All of the above was phrased in terms of integers, but, in fact, it works just as well replacing “integer” by “Gaussian integer” throughout! So we have that each nonzero Gaussian integer uniquely factorizes into a product of Gaussian primes.
In particular, each ordinary integer also has a factorization as a product of Gaussian primes, which we can obtain by first factoring it into ordinary primes, and then further factoring those ordinary primes into Gaussian primes. So let’s try to understand how ordinary primes factor into Gaussian primes.
Let p be an ordinary prime and let q be a Gaussian prime factor of p. By symmetry, q’s conjugate must also be a prime factor of p. It may be that q is similar to its conjugate or not.
[ul]
[li]If q and its conjugate aren’t similar, then their product is a non-unit integer factor of p, and thus must be p itself. In this case, let’s say p is a “bifurcating” prime; it’s prime within the integers, but splits into two dissimilar conjugate primes within the Gaussian integers.[/li][li]On the other hand, if q and its conjugate are similar, then q is either similar to an integer or similar to an integer multiple of 1 + i. In the former case, as p is prime within the integers, we must have that q is similar to p itself, and thus p is already a Gaussian prime (let’s call such p “atomic”). In the latter case (with q similar to a multiple of 1 + i), we have that p is divisible by 1 + i, and thus p^2 = |p|^2 is divisible by |1 + i|^2 = 2; this can only occur when p itself is even, which is to say, when p is 2. And, indeed, 2 has the Gaussian prime factorization (1 + i) * (1 - i), a product of two similar conjugates.[/li][/ul]
In summary, every odd ordinary prime is either itself a Gaussian prime (in which case we’ll call it “atomic”), or the product of two dissimilar conjugate Gaussian primes (in which case we’ll call it “bifurcating”). The one other ordinary prime is 2, which has the Gaussian prime factorization (1 + i) * (1 - i), consisting of two similar conjugates.
Thus, the Gaussian prime factorization of K can be determined from the ordinary prime factorization of K: simply take the latter and split each 2 into two copies of (1 + i) [up to similarity], as well as splitting each bifurcating prime into the appropriate two two dissimilar conjugate Gaussian primes, and leaving each atomic prime alone.
Now we can tackle the question of how many ways (up to similarity) there are to write K as A^2 + B^2 = |A + iB|^2 = (A + iB) * (A - iB). This is the number of ways to split the Gaussian prime factors of K into two groups, each group consisting of the conjugates of the other. Our hands are tied for those Gaussian prime factors of K arising from 2: we will have an even number of copies of (1 + i), and must simply split these half and half among our two groups ((1 + i) counting as self-conjugate up to similarity). Similarly, our hands are tied for those Gaussian prime factors of K arising from any particular atomic prime: again, we must split these half and half (if possible; i.e., if it appears an even number of times. Otherwise, we will not be able to write K as a sum of two squares at all). Finally, and most interestingly, for each bifurcating prime factor of K, we get some choice: if it appears e times in the ordinary prime factorization of K, then we get e copies of p and e copies of p’, for dissimilar conjugate Gaussian primes p and p’, in the Gaussian prime factorization of K. Partitioning these into two groups, each consisting of the conjugates of the other, can be done in e + 1 ways in total (we can choose anywhere from 0 to n copies of p to put into the first group, and everything else is uniquely determined by this).
In conclusion, the number of ways (up to similarity) to write K as A^2 + B^2 will be zero if any atomic prime appears with an odd exponent in the prime factorization of K, and otherwise, it will be the product of (e + 1) over each exponent e of a bifurcating prime in the prime factorization of K. (In the case where K = C^2, the prime factorization of K automatically has only even exponents, and the number of ways will become the product of (2e + 1) over each exponent e of a bifurcating prime in the prime factorization of C).
[We’ve counted up to similarity, but luckily, every Gaussian integer is similar to precisely one Gaussian integer of the form A + iB “in the first quadrant” (that is, with neither A nor B negative, and also with A positive if B is). So this is basically the same as counting the number of solutions with positive A and positive B, except it also allows for B to be zero if A is positive. In our case of interest (A^2 + B^2 = C^2 with positive C), there is precisely one solution of this form (A = C) which we can subtract out if we do not wish to count it.
This also counts A^2 + B^2 distinctly from B^2 + A^2; you can divide the count in half to get rid of that if you like (again, luckily, you will never have solutions where A^2 = B^2 as the exponent of 2 on the left-hand side of A^2 + B^2 = C^2 would be odd but on the right-hand side would be even).]
Phew! That’s quite a bit already, but we’re almost done. Now we just need to figure out which odd primes are atomic/bifurcating.
If ordinary prime p equals (A + iB) * (A - iB) = A^2 + B^2, then B won’t be divisible by p, and so A/B will be a well-defined square root of -1 in the field of integers mod p. Conversely, if there is a square root r of -1 in the field of integers mod p, then we have that 1 + r^2 = (1 + ir) * (1 - ir) is a multiple of p, even though p divides neither factor, and thus, p cannot be a Gaussian prime itself. Thus, p is atomic just in case there is no square root of -1 modulo p.
How do we tell if -1 has a square root modulo p? More generally, how do we tell if a value has a square root modulo p? Well, note that two values have the same square just in case they are each other’s negations; restricting attention to the case where p is odd, no nonzero value is its own negation, so the p - 1 nonzero values square to precisely (p - 1)/2 distinct nonzero values. Furthermore, Fermat’s Little Theorem tells us r^(p - 1) = (r^2)^((p - 1)/2) is 1 modulo p for any nonzero r; accordingly, the nonzero values with square roots modulo p are precisely the (p - 1)/2 many solutions to x^((p - 1)/2) = 1.
Does (-1)^((p - 1)/2) = 1? Well, by the nature of -1, this is true just in case (p - 1)/2 is even, which is to say, just in case p is of the form 4k + 1. Thus, we see that the bifurcating primes are precisely those of the form 4k + 1 (with those of the form 4k - 1 being atomic, and 2 being its own odd man out), completing our investigation.
Typo corrected in bold.
Simpler proof that suffices that you can have a circle with arbitrarily many lattice points: For any n, take the first n primitive Pythagorean triples (this depends on there being an infinite number of primitive Pythagorean triples, but that’s easy enough to prove). List out all of the hypotenuse lengths, and find the least common multiple of them. Scale up all of the triples by the appropriate multiple such that they all have that hypotenuse. You now have n points on the circle in each octant (plus one more on each axis), for a total of 8n+4 points.
Indeed, this is essentially the argument given by biqu in post #7. The lengthy discussion I gave in post #13 is only of interest if one cares about knowing not only that there are z with arbitrarily many solutions, but, furthermore, understanding what controls precisely how many solutions there are for general z, and the structure of those solutions.
Since primitive Pythagorean triples have been mentioned, I might note that a consequence of the above discussion is also a quick calculation of the number of primitive Pythagorean triples of a given hypotenuse size z > 1: if every prime factor of z has remainder 1 when divided by 4, this will be 2[sup]n - 1[/sup], where n is the number of distinct prime factors of z. Otherwise, this will be zero.