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Fermat's Four Squares Theorem

Number Theory 2007-12-27 v1 History and Overview

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 14\frac14, 6146\frac14, 121412\frac14. It is an arithmetic progression with common difference 6, consisting of squares (12)2(\frac12)^2, (52)2(\frac52)^2, (72)2(\frac72)^2 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 92+402=4129^{2}+40^{2}=41^{2} has area 180=562180=5\cdot6^{2} and the numbers x5x-5, xx and x+5x+5 all are rational squares if x=1197/144x=11{97/144}. Recall one obtains all Pythagorean triangles with relatively prime integer sides by taking x=4uvx=4uv, y=±(4u2v2)y=\pm(4u^{2}-v^{2}), z=4u2+v2z=4u^{2}+v^{2} where uu and vv are integers with 2u2u and vv relatively prime. Fermat proved that there is no AP of more than three squares of rationals.

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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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R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:57:06.158Z