Proofs of Chappelon and Alfons\'n Conjectures On Square Frobenius Numbers and its Relationship to Simultaneous Pell's Equations
Abstract
Recently, Chappelon and Alfons\'n defined the square Frobenius number of coprime numbers m and n to be the largest perfect square that cannot be expressed in the form mx+ny for nonnegative integers x and y. When m and n differ by 1 or 2, they found simple expressions if neither m nor n is a perfect square. If either m or n is a perfect square, they formulated some interesting conjectures which have an unexpected close connection with a known recursive sequence, related to the denominators of Farey fraction approximations to 2. In this note, we prove these conjectures. Our methods involve solving Pell's equations x2-2y2=1 and x2-2y2=-1. Finally, to complete our proofs of these conjectures, we eliminate several cases using a bunch of results related to solutions of simultaneous Pell's equations.
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