On the solutions of the Diophantine equation \(F_n \pm \frac{a (10^m - 1)}{9} = k!\) (Q2161349)

Let \(\{F_n\}_{n\ge 0}\) be the usual sequence of \textit{Fibonacci numbers} given by the linear recurrence: \(F_0=0, F_1=1\), and \(F_{n+2}=F_{n+1}+F_{n}\) for all \(n\ge 0\). In the paper under review, the authors study the Diophantine equations \[ F_n=k!+ \dfrac{a(10^{m}-1)}{9},\tag{1} \] and \[ F_n=k!- \dfrac{a(10^{m}-1)}{9},\tag{2} \] in positive integers \((m,n,a,k)\) such that \(1\le a\le 9\). Their main result is the following. Theorem 1. \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] All positive integer solutions \((m,n,a,k)\) of the equation (1) with \(1\le a\le 9\) belong to the set \(N_1\), where \[ N_1:=\left\{\begin{matrix} (1,3,1,1), (1,4,2,1), (1,5,4,1) , (1,6,7,1), (1,4,1,2), (1,5,3,2),\\ (1,6,6,2), (1,6,2,3), (1,7,7,3), (2,9,3,1), (2,11,8,1), (2,7,1,2) \end{matrix} \right\}. \] \item[(2)] All positive integer solutions \((m,n,a,k)\) of the equation (2) with \(1\le a\le 9\) belong to the set \(N_2\), where \[ N_2:=\left\{ \begin{matrix} (1,1,1,2), (1,2,1,2), (1,5,1,3), (1,4,3,3), (1,3,4,3), (1,1,5,3),\\ (1,2,5,3), (1,8,3,4), (2,7,1,4), (2,3,2,4), (2,8,9,5) \end{matrix}\right\}. \] \end{itemize} The proof of Theorem 1 follows from a clever combination of techniques in Diophantine number theory, the usual properties of the Fibonacci sequence, the theory of nonzero lower bounds for linear forms in \(p\)-adic logarithims and logarithms of algebraic numbers, and the reduction procedure involving the theory of continued fractions. All numerical computations are done with the aid of a computer program in \texttt{Maple}.