English

A note on some polynomial-factorial diophantine equations

Number Theory 2023-09-26 v3 Algebraic Geometry

Abstract

In 1876 Brocard, and independently in 1913 Ramanujan, asked to find all integer solutions for the equation n!=x21n!=x^2-1. It is conjectured that this equation has only three solutions, but up to now this is an open problem. Overholt observed that a weak form of Szpiro's-conjecture implies that Brocard's equation has finitely many integer solutions. More generally, assuming the ABC-conjecture, Luca showed that equations of the form n!=P(x)n!=P(x) where P(x)Z[x]P(x)\in\mathbb{Z}[x] of degree d2d\geq 2 have only finitely many integer solutions with n>0n>0. And if P(x)P(x) is irreducible, Berend and Harmse proved unconditionally that P(x)=n!P(x)=n! has only finitely many integer solutions. In this note we study diophantine equations of the form g(x1,...,xr)=P(x)g(x_1,...,x_r)=P(x) where P(x)Z[x]P(x)\in\mathbb{Z}[x] of degree d2d\geq 2 and g(x1,...,xr)Z[x1,...,xr]g(x_1,...,x_r)\in \mathbb{Z}[x_1,...,x_r] where for xix_i one may also plug in AnA^{n} or the Bhargava factorial n!Sn!_S. We want to understand when there are finitely many or infinitely many integer solutions. Moreover, we study diophantine equations of the form g(x1,...,xr)=f(x,y)g(x_1,...,x_r)=f(x,y) where f(x,y)Z[x,y]f(x,y)\in\mathbb{Z}[x,y] is a homogeneous polynomial of degree 2\geq2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.11002,
  title  = {A note on some polynomial-factorial diophantine equations},
  author = {Saša Novaković},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.11002},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

14 pages, references added, typos corrected, comments welcome!

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:00:50.719Z