Pillai's conjecture revisited. (Q1869792)

The main purpose of this paper is to prove a generalization of an old conjecture of Pillai to the effect that the Diophantine equation \(3^x- 2^y= c\) has, for \(| c|> 13\), at most one solution in positive integers \(x\) and \(y\) [see \textit{S. S. Pillai}, J. Indian Math. Soc., n. Ser. 2, 119--122 (1936; Zbl 0014.39205)]. This conjecture remained open until 1982 when \textit{R. J. Stroeker} and \textit{R. Tijdeman} [Computational methods in number theory. Part 2, Math. Cent. Tracts 155, 321--369 (1982; Zbl 0521.10013)] proved it using lower bounds for linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers following Alan Baker. More precisely, the author proves that, if \(N\) and \(c\) are given positive integers with \(N\geq 2\), then the equation \(|(N+ 1)^x- N^y|= c\) has at most one solution in positive integers \(x\) and \(y\), unless \((N, c)= (2, 1), (2, 5), (2, 7), (2, 13), (2, 23)\), or \((3, 13)\). In the first two of these cases, there are precisely 3 solutions, while the last four cases have 2 solutions apiece. The proof uses the hypergeometric method of Thue and Siegel, a method available to Pillai at the time, and avoids the use of lower bounds for linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers.