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1. Introduction to this course

Structures are the weapons of the mathematician. Nicolas Bourbaki

1.1. The Study of Structures. As many of you might know, number theory is the study of integers. This is a good starting point, but what do we mean by "study"? It is certainly NOT enough to just know what all the integers are. Otherwise, the course would be over before it starts... Rather, we try to understand the structures among the integers. Here are some most important examples of structures: (1) Arithmetic, algebraic structures: one can do addition and multiplication of integers, and still get an integer; the negative of an integer is still an integer, while the reciprocal of an integer is not an integer (unless for 1). 0 + n = n, 1 n = n. Associativity, commutativity laws for addition and multiplication... (2) Distance: one has the usual absolute value . One can say whether a and b are "close" to each other. One also has the p-adic absolute value p : if n = pm q , where q is relatively prime to p, then n p = (1 p)m ; roughly, it measures how divisible" n is, by the prime number p. (3) Order: one can say an integer is larger (or smaller) than another integer. In particular, every set of positive integers contains a smallest element. It turns out that these structures, which we are so familiar with ever since elementary school, can lead to results about integers which are totally non-obvious and even very deep. In establishing these results, mathematicians have developed very usual languges/formalisms/auxiliary tools, which in return have broadened the scope of mathematics itself. In the next section, well list some of those results. They should give you a avor about what kind of information mathematicians quest for in the study of number theory. eg. Other structures you might have seen before: topological structure: characterizes shapes of spaces, eg. how many holes a closed surface has, whether a space is compact, connected etc. (MAT-147, MAT-215) geometric structure: gives measurement of angles and distances. (MAT141, MAT-240) dierentiable structure: allows people to do calculus on certain kind of spaces. (MAT-125, MAT-239) complex structure: talks about complex dierentiable functions on spaces. (MAT-185, MAT-205) 1.2. What is Number Theory about? In this section, lets take a quick glimpse on some of the important topics in number theory. The purpose of this section is only to give you a avor of what number theory is about. We will certainly not
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cover everything listed here, but we will talk about some the basic results as we go along the course. 1.2.1. Factorization of Integers. One of the most important topic in elementary number theory is the factorization of integers. The following statements are all related to this topic. Related notions are "divisibility" and "congruence". Take any integer n, we can factorize them as product of prime numbers. One may imagine those primes as the building blocks of integer numbers. This phenomenon relates dierent integers in some way: given two integers a, b, one may ask whether a is a multiple of b ("b divides a"), or vice versa; if neither a divides b or b divides a, one can further ask "how far" a is away from dividing b, using the language of congruence; similarly, one can also ask a slightly generalized question: whether a, b only dier by some power of a prime number p. Here are some results related to factorization of integers. Proposition 1. Every positive integer can be uniquely written as a product of prime factors. Proposition 2. (a, b) = min{ma + nb m, n Z, ma + nb 0}. ((a, b) is the greatest common divisor of a and b. See the section on notations.) Proposition 3. {ma + nb m, n Z} = ((a, b)). ((n) is the set of all multiples of n. See the section on notations.) Remark These results actually shed light on the (less obvious) algebraic structure of Z. In the language of abstract algebra, we say Z is a "principal ideal domain". As a consequence, it is a "unique factorization domain", which is a fancy way to state the fact that every positive integer uniquely factorizes as a product of prime factors. Since this is a number theory class, our main focus will not be the abstract algebra language in this course. 1.2.2. Distribution of Prime Numbers. The distribution of primes is another important topic in number theory: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37... Is there any pattern here? At rst glance, it might be even quite unclear why one can even approach such a question. Whether a number is prime or not is almost given to us as a mysterious fact, ever since humans start to count. However, mathematicians have achieved some deep understanding on this topic. Here are some results related to the distribution of primes: Proposition 4. There are innitely many prime numbers. Proposition 5. For any integer n that is not prime, it has a prime factor less or equal than n.
1 Proposition 6. (Euler) ( p ) = , i.e. the sum of the reciprocals of all prime numbers goes to innity.

Proposition 7. (Chebyshev) For x > 2, the number of primes that are less than x 1 x x is between 10 ( log ) and 10( log ). x x Remark We are only listing some basic results here. Indeed, the distribution of primes is a very deep topic. The famous Riemann Hypothesis (see 1.2.4) is regarded as the ultimate question in this eld. It remains open to this day. The big picture is the following: if impossible to nd a simple pattern to describe the innitely many prime numbers, the next best thing to do is to study the asymptotic behavior of prime numbers, i.e. the distribution of prime numbers, when the numbers gradually approach innity.

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1.2.3. Diophantine Equations. An important viewpoint in the study of integers is to look for integer solutions to a given polynomial equation. These equations, for which we only allow integer solutions, are called diophantine equations. eg. The most familiar example of a Diophantine equation is probably x2 + y 2 = z 2 . Looking for integer solutions (x, y, z ) of this equation, is the same as looking for all triples of integers that can form the three sides of a right triangle. We refer to them as Pythagorean triples. eg. The previous example generalizes easily to the following form xn + y n = z n for n 3. Surprisingly, this leads to one of the most famous problem in mathematical history: Fermats last theorem. (See 1.2.4.) eg. Pells Equation: x2 ny 2 = 1. Notice that this expression gives a family of quadratic equations, i.e. for dierent n, the integer solutions may behave dierently. An important observation is that, the equation can be written as numbers of the form a + b n, (x + ny )(x ny ) = 1. This motivates the study where a, b are integers. It turns out that the set Z[ n] = {a + b n a, b Z} shares similar algebraic structure as Z. Remark Another viewpoint towards Pells equation: take n = 3 as an example, 2 and re-write the equation as x 3 = y12 . Suppose we found innitely many integer y2 m solutions (xm , ym ) such that ym , then { x } form an approximation of the ym irrational number 3, by rational numbers. This might be the original motivation for ancient people to study this equation thousands years ago. Proposition 8. (Fermat) Every positive integer can be written as the sum of the squares of 4 integers. In other words, x2 + y 2 + z 2 + w2 = n, where n > 0 has an integer solution. eg. Here is a quick example showing you that algebraic question are related to 1 geometry: consider the line y = x in R2 . Since the slope 1 is a transcendental number, there are no integer points on this line, other than (0, 0). 1.2.4. Some Deep Results or Open Problems in Number Theory. To show the beauty of number theory, we also list some results whose diculty are way beyond the level our class. Conjecture 1. (The Twin Prime Conjecture) There are innitely many pairs of consecutive primes p, q such that q = p + 2. Maybe the most exciting progress in number theory in the year 2013 is related to the Twin Prime conjecture. Earlier this year, Yitang Zhang proved that there are innitely pair of consecutive primes p, q , such that q p 70 million. The current progress on this problem shows that this gap has been reduced to 12006. See http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Bounded_gaps_ between_primes for more detail. The story of the mathematician Yitang Zhang is very inspiring. According to Wikipedia, he worked for several years as an accountant, a delivery worker for a New York City restaurant, in a motel in Kentucky and in a Subway sandwich shop before working as a lecturer." Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Yitang_Zhang for more detail. Theorem 1. Suppose n 3. There do NOT exist three positive integers a, b, c such that an + bn = cn .

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This was probably one of the most well-known problems in the history of mathematics. When Andrew Wiles eventually proved the conjecture in the 1990s, this problem has remained as a conjecture for more than 300 years! An important feature to the problem is that, it is extremely simple to state the result, but the proof uses very advanced machinery in modern algebraic number theory. This is also one good justication for why one should care about some seemingly esoteric algebraic structures: they really lead to something deep! Conjecture 2. (Goldbachs Conjecture) Every even integer greater than 2 can be written as a sum of two prime numbers. Again, a very simple statement, but we dont know whether it is true in general yet. The point I want to make is, in mathematics, there are lots of plausible simple statements which are dicult to prove. The fact that they are hard to prove usually suggests that there are some highly non-obvious structures hiding under the rug. It is very possible that elementary approaches will simply never solve some of the remaining open problems. Hopefully, this motivates you to climb the mountain of modern mathematics. We shall end our list of examples with the statement of Riemann Hypothesis. If we have time, the content of this hypothesis will be explained to you later. Since this requires some complex analysis, you dont need to worry about it at all (for HW, exam etc.). Conjecture 3. (Riemann Hypothesis) Consider the Riemann Zeta function, dened over the complex numbers C except for s = 1, which is the analytic continuation 1 . The real part of any non-trivial zero of the Riemann zeta function of (s) = s n =1 n is 1/2. This complex-variable function is related to the distribution of prime numbers 1 (Re(s) > 1), where the product on the via the following identity: = s p 1p n =1 right-hand side runs through all prime numbers. 2. Notations Hereafter, well x the following set of notations. If you dont know some of the terminologies here mentioned, thats perfectly ne. They will be dened as the course goes along. We list them here basically for your future convenience. (1) Most frequently, we use three logic symbols: means "for any XXX", means "there exists XXX", and means "...belongs to...". A B is the intersection of two sets i.e. those elements that are both in A and in B ; and A B is the union of two sets, i.e. those elements that are either in A or in B . (2) Well use Z for the set of all integers. Z = {0, 1, 2, ...}. N stands for natural numbers, or positive integers: N = {1, 2, 3, 4, ...} (3) Q will stand for the set of rational numbers. i.e. numbers of the form a, b where a, b Z and b 0. Similarly, R stands for real numbers, and C for complex numbers. (4) (n) = {0, n, 2n, 3n, ...}. For example, (2) = {0, 2, 4, ...} is the set of all even integers. (5) p usually stands for a prime number, and we use other letters such as a, b, c, n, m etc. for arbitrary integers, which are not necessarily prime.

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(6) [x] is the largest integer less or equal to a given real number x. (7) (a1 , ..., an ) stands for the greatest common divisor of the integers a1 , ..., an . (8) a b reads as "a divides b", and means that there exists another integer c such that b = ac. (9) a b (mod n), means that n (a b), and reads as a is congruent to b modulo n. (10) Z[i] will be the set of complex numbers of the form a + bi, where a, b Z, 1. and i = (11) Z[ n] = {a + b n a, b Z}. (12) As a set, Z pZ can be thought of as {0, 1, 2, ..., p 1}. As we will see in the course, Z pZ is related to integers modulo a prime number p. Naively, say p = 2, Z 2Z = {0, 1}, and can be interpreted as "every integer n is either odd or even", i.e. it can be either written as 2k + 1 or 2k . 3. Basic Structures over Z Lets start by reviewing some maths from elementary school. First of all, we have all learned how to do addition in integers. Moreover, we know the addition + satises the following properties: Commutativity: a + b = b + a. Associativity: (a + b) + c = a + (b + c) There is a "special" integer 0 such that 0 + a = a + 0 = a for all integers a. For any integer a, there exists another integer b such that a + b = b + a = 0. Clearly b is just a. We are all very familiar with these nice properties. They characterize some algebraic structure over Z. To refer to this structure, we make the following denition: (1) (2) (3) (4) Denition 1. Let G be a set. Suppose there is a binary operation + G G G (a, b) a + b such that the following are true: (1) Commutativity: a + b = b + a. (2) Associativity: (a + b) + c = a + (b + c) (3) some element 0 in G, such that 0 + a = a + 0 = a. This is usually called the zero element of G. (4) For any a G, there exists another element b G such that a + b = b + a = 0. Then, G is called an abelian group with respect to the binary operation +. We usually write (G, +) to emphasize the binary operation we are considering. Remark A "binary operation" simply means that it takes in a pair of elements from the set each time, and spits out single element in this set. Since all the dening properties are extracted from Z with respect to the usual addition +, (Z, +) is an abelian group. One might wonder why we bother to introduce this abstract denition. The following example is motivational: eg. Verify that (Z[i], +), (Z[ 3], +) are abelian groups. In both cases, additions are dened in the natural way. The point is that, in number theory, Z is the original object of interest. But to understand Z, it is often useful to understand other sets of (real or complex) numbers. See the example of Pells equation. Hence, it is natural that we look

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forward to generalizing our framework later. eg. Verify that ((n), +) is an abelian group. We call is a sub-group of (Z, +). We also know how to do multiplications in Z. In fact, the multiplication (well use instead of , or simply omit the symbol) operation satises the following properties: (1) Associativity: (a b) c = a (b c). (2) There is a special number 1, such that 1 a = a 1 = a, for all integers a. Moreover, + and interacts in a nice way, namely we have the distributive laws: (1) (a + b) c = a c + b c. (2) a (b + c) = a b + a c. In short, Z is not only an abelian group with respect to usual addition, it has also some other good structure coming from the usual multiplication. We pack up our observation in the following denition: Denition 2. Suppose R is a set with two binary operations, denoted as + and . If they satisfy the following conditions: (1) (R, +) is an abelian group. (2) The other binary operation satises associativity: (a b) c = a (b c). (3) some element e R such that e a = a, for all a R. This element is called the multiplicative unit of R, sometimes also denoted as 1R or simply 1. (4) The two operations satisfy the distributive laws: (a + b) c = a c + b c; a (b + c) = a b + a c. Then, R is called a ring. To emphasize the two operations, we write (R, +, ). Remark Z is a ring with respect to the usual addition and multiplication. However, we shouldnt forget that multiplication of integers is also commutative. a b = b a. This further motivates the following denition: Denition 3. Let (R, +, ) be a ring. (By denition, (R, +) is an abelian group, so the operation + is always commutative.) Suppose the operation is also commutative, then we say (R, +, ) is a commutative ring. eg. Verify that Z[ 3] and Z[i] are commutative rings with respect to the usual addition and multiplication of complex numbers. Thus, we have summarized the basic algebraic structures over Z. Later, when we study congruences, well see the convenience of the language we hereby introduced. In particular, well show that Z pZ = {0, 1, ..., p 1} is a commutative ring, and its structure encodes the information of congruence arithmetic. 4. Divisibility 4.1. Denitions and Properties. One rst major topic in this course is factorization of integers. Divisibility is the preliminary language for talking about factorizations. Denition 4. Suppose a, b are two integers. We say a divides b, and write a b, if there exists another integer c such that a c = b. In this case, we also say a is a divisor of b", and b is a multiple of a". (Well resume tomorrow.)