Number theory MOC

Bรฉzout's lemma

Bรฉzout's lemma is the statement that GCD is a linear combination.

Given nonzero integers ๐‘Ž,๐‘, then there exists ๐‘ ,๐‘ก โˆˆโ„ค such that gcd(๐‘Ž,๐‘) =๐‘ ๐‘Ž +๐‘ก๐‘. #m/thm/num

Sometimes this is stated with the additional property that gcd(๐‘Ž,๐‘) is the smallest positive integer of this form, thus for all ๐‘Ž,๐‘ โˆˆโ„•

gcd(๐‘Ž,๐‘)=min{๐‘ ๐‘Ž+๐‘ก๐‘โˆฃ๐‘ ,๐‘กโˆˆโ„•,๐‘ ๐‘Ž+๐‘ก๐‘>0}

This extra property can be proven by the fact that any linear combination of the form ๐‘ ๐‘Ž +๐‘ก๐‘ is some multiple of gcd(๐‘Ž,๐‘).

Bรฉzout's lemma can be used to prove Euclid's lemma. The integers ๐‘ ,๐‘ก can be found by Extended Euclid's algorithm

For relative primes

A corollary of Bรฉzout's lemma is that if ๐‘Ž and ๐‘ are relatively prime then there exists ๐‘ ,๐‘ก โˆˆโ„ค such that ๐‘ ๐‘Ž +๐‘ก๐‘ =1.

Practice problems


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