The Nagell-Ljunggren equation \(\frac{x^n-1}{x-1}=y^q\) (Q1419572)

This is a survey paper that gives the history of the Nagell-Ljunggren equation \[ {x^n-1\over x-1}= y^q \] and an overview of our present knowledge about it. Another way of stating the problem of solving this exponential Diophantine equation is: which perfect powers can be written to a certain base with only 1's? Only three solutions are known, namely \[ (x,y,n,q)= (3,11,5,2),\;(7,20,4,2),\;(18,7,3,3) \] and it is conjectured that these are the only solutions in positive integers. However, in the light of present knowledge, this conjecture seems too ambitious. More realistically it could be conjectured that it has only finitely many solutions. It was shown by T. N. Shorey that the latter follows from the abc-conjecture. The present survey first presents the results due to Nagell and Ljunggren, and follows with finiteness results by T. N. Shorey and R. Tijdeman based on the work of Alan Baker. Next results are presented on special cases where \(x\) is restricted in some way, and a generalization is discussed: which perfect powers can be written to a certain base with only one given digit or a bloc of given digits? Finally, a couple of applications are discussed. The extensive bibliography holds 53 items.