On perfect powers that are sums of cubes of a three term arithmetic progression

Alejandro Argáez-García, Vandita Patel

Published 2017-11-17Version 1

Using only elementary arguments, Cassels and Uchiyama (independently) determined all squares that are sums of three consecutive cubes. Zhongfeng Zhang extended this result and determined all perfect powers that are sums of three consecutive cubes. Recently, the equation $(x-r)^k + x^k + (x+r)^k$ has been studied for $k=4$ by Zhongfeng Zhang and for $k=2$ by Koutsianas. In this paper, we complement the work of Cassels, Koutsianas and Zhang by considering the case when $k=3$ and showing that the equation $(x-r)^3+x^3+(x+r)^3=y^n$ with $n\geq 5$ a prime and $0 < r \leq 10^6$ only has trivial solutions $(x,y,n)$ which satisfy $xy=0$.