Two terms with known prime divisors adding to a power

Abstract: Let

c

be a positive odd integer and

R

a set of

n

primes coprime with

c

. We consider equations

X + Y = c^{z}

in three integer unknowns

X

,

Y

,

z

, where

z > 0

,

Y > X > 0

, and the primes dividing

X Y

are precisely those in

R

. We consider

N

, the number of solutions of such an equation. Given a solution

(X, Y, z)

, let

D

be the least positive integer such that

(X Y / D)^{1 / 2}

is an integer. Further, let

o m e g a

be the number of distinct primes dividing

c

. Standard elementary approaches use an upper bound of

2^{n}

for the number of possible

D

, and an upper bound of

2^{o m e g a - 1}

for the number of ideal factorizations of

c

in the field

a t Q (s q r t - D)

which can correspond (in a standard designated way) to a solution in which

(X Y / D)^{1 / 2} i n i n t Z

, and obtain

N l e 2^{n + o m e g a - 1}

. Here we improve this by finding an inverse proportionality relationship between a bound on the number of

D

which can occur in solutions and a bound (independent of

D

) on the number of ideal factorizations of

c

which can correspond to solutions for a given

D

. We obtain

N l e 2^{n - 1} + 1

. The bound is precise for

n < 4

: there are several cases with exactly

2^{n - 1} + 1

solutions. For higher values of

n

the bound becomes unrealistic, but is nevertheless an improvement on bounds obtained by both elementary and non-elementary methods.

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