Problem

Source: India IMOTC Practice Test 2 Problem 2

Tags: Polynomials, number theory, algebra, polynomial



Fix a positive integer $a > 1$. Consider triples $(f(x), g(x), h(x))$ of polynomials with integer coefficients, such that 1. $f$ is a monic polynomial with $\deg f \ge 1$. 2. There exists a positive integer $N$ such that $g(x)>0$ for $x \ge N$ and for all positive integers $n \ge N$, we have $f(n) \mid a^{g(n)} + h(n)$. Find all such possible triples. Proposed by Mainak Ghosh and Rijul Saini