Fermat's Four Squares Theorem
Abstract
It is easy to find a right-angled triangle with integer sides whose area is 6. There is no such triangle with area 5, but there is one with rational sides (a `\emph{Pythagorean triangle}'). For historical reasons, integers such as 6 or 5 that are (the squarefree part of) the area of some Pythagorean triangle are called `\emph{congruent numbers}'. These numbers actually are interesting for the following reason: Notice the sequence , , . It is an arithmetic progression with common difference 6, consisting of squares , , of rational numbers. Indeed the common difference of three rational squares in AP is a congruent number and every congruent number is the common difference of three rational squares in arithmetic progression. The triangle given by has area and the numbers , and all are rational squares if . Recall one obtains all Pythagorean triangles with relatively prime integer sides by taking , , where and are integers with and relatively prime. Fermat proved that there is no AP of more than three squares of rationals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0712.3850,
title = {Fermat's Four Squares Theorem},
author = {Alf van der Poorten},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.3850},
year = {2007}
}
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