A variety of Euler's conjecture

Tianxin Cai, Yong Zhang

Published 2013-09-29Version 1

We consider a variety of Euler's conjecture, i.e., whether the Diophantine system \[\begin{cases} n=a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{s-1}, a_{1}a_{2}\cdots a_{s-1}(a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{s-1})=b^{s} \end{cases}\] has solutions $n,b,a_i\in\mathbb{Z}^+,i=1,2,\ldots,s-1,s\geq 3.$ By using the theory of elliptic curves, we prove that it has no solutions $n,b,a_i\in\mathbb{Z}^+$ for $s=3$, but for $s=4$ it has infinitely many solutions $n,b,a_i\in\mathbb{Z}^+$ and for $s\geq 5$ there are infinitely many polynomial solutions $n,b,a_i\in\mathbb{Z}[t_1,t_2,\ldots,t_{s-3}]$ with positive value satisfying this Diophantine system.