Fermat's last theorem implies Euclid's infinitude of primes

DOI10.1080/00029890.2021.1856544MaRDI QIDQ4964194zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Christian Elsholtz

Publication date 25 February 2021

Published in The American Mathematical Monthly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.06722

zbMATH Keywords

Fermat equationinfinitude of primesRamsey's theoremSchur's coloring theorem

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Ramsey theory (05D10) Primes (11A41) Other combinatorial number theory (11B75)

Abstract: We show that Fermat's last theorem and a combinatorial theorem of Schur on monochromatic solutions of $a+b=c$ implies that there exist infinitely many primes. In particular, for small exponents such as $n=3$ or $4$ this gives a new proof of Euclid's theorem, as in this case Fermat's last theorem has a proof that does not use the infinitude of primes. Similarly, we discuss implications of Roth's theorem on arithmetic progressions, Hindman's theorem, and infinite Ramsey theory towards Euclid's theorem. As a consequence we see that Euclid's Theorem is a necessary condition for many interesting (seemingly unrelated) results in mathematics.

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Cited in

(6)

• A Connection between Furstenberg’s and Euclid’s Proofs of the Infinitude of Primes
• The Green-Tao Theorem and the Infinitude of Primes in Domains
• Fermat's last theorem, Schur's theorem (in Ramsey theory), and the infinitude of the primes
• A discrete approach to the asymptotic enumeration of sets of primes and MacMahon's partition statistics
• The Infinitude of the Primes and Some Coloring Theorems
• Folkman's theorem and the primes

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