Mersenne numbers which are products of two Pell numbers (Q2141749): Difference between revisions

Let \( (P_n)_{n\ge 0} \) be the sequence of \textit{Pell numbers} defined by the linear recurrence, \( P_0=0 \), \( P_1=1 \), and \( P_{n+2}=2P_{n+1}+P_n \) for all \( n\ge 0 \); and \( M_k:=2^{k}-1 \) be the \( k \)-th \textit{Mersenne number} for some integer \( k\ge 1 \). In the paper under review, the authors search for the products of two Pell numbers that are Mersenne numbers. More precisely, they prove the following theorem, which is the main result in the paper. Theorem 1. The Diophantine equation \begin{align*} P_nP_m =M_k, \quad 1\le m\le n, \quad k\ge 0, \end{align*} has only the integer solution \( (n,m,k)=(1,1,1) \). The proof of Theorem 1 follows from a clever combination of techniques in number theory, the usual properties of Pell numbers, Baker's theory of nonzero linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers, and the reduction techniques involving the theory of continued fractions. All computations are done with the help of a computer program in \texttt{Maple}.