A Constructive Proof of Jacobi's Identity for the Sum of Two Squares

Abstract

We present a constructive proof of Jacobi's identity for the sum of two squares. We present a combinatorial proof of the Jacobi Triple Product and combine with a proof of Hirschhorn to define an algorithm. The input is a factorization $n=dN$ with $d \equiv1\mod 4$ plus two bits of data, and whose output is either another factorization $n=d'N'$ and $d' \equiv3\mod 4$ with two more bits of data, or a pair of integers whose squares sum to $n$. We phrase this algorithm in terms of integer partitions and matchings on an infinite graph.