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Bézout's identity: for integers not both zero, is the least positive element of ; in particular has an integer solution
Statement
Let , not both , and put
Then contains a positive element, and its least positive element is (Common divisor, and the greatest common divisor , with the convention ). In particular there are integers with
so the equation is solvable in .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Integers and , not both ; the set ; and the embedding , , of The naturals embed in the integers.
is a commutative ring: addition and multiplication are associative and commutative, , , , multiplication distributes over addition, and every has an additive inverse , with and ; we write for (The integers form a commutative ring, Arithmetic on the integers, The integers as equivalence classes of pairs of naturals).
The order on is total, antisymmetric and transitive, is compatible with addition, and positives are closed under multiplication; means together with (The integers form a totally ordered ring, Order on the integers).
is injective, preserves addition, multiplication and order, and its image is exactly the nonnegative integers (The naturals embed in the integers, The natural numbers (von Neumann)).
Every nonempty subset of has a least element (The well-ordering principle, Order on the natural numbers).
For and there are integers with and (Division with remainder in : for and there are unique with and ).
For , is the unique greatest element of the set of common divisors of and (Common divisor, and the greatest common divisor , with the convention ).
means for some (Divisibility in : when for some integer ).
Proof
If and then , and if moreover and then : for or the product is , and otherwise and , so because positives are closed under multiplication.
If and then : adding to gives , so by transitivity, and would give and hence by antisymmetry, contrary to .
for every , with when . By totality either , and step 1.1 applies directly, or , in which case by compatibility with addition and by step 1.1; the strict form follows since gives .
contains a positive element: , and one of is nonzero, so one of , is positive and the other is nonnegative, whence the sum is positive by step 1.2.
Let be the set of positive elements of and put . Every satisfies , hence for some with ; so is nonempty by step 3.1.
By well-ordering let be the least element of and put , so and ; fix with .
is the least element of : given , write with as in step 4.1; then , and applying , which preserves the order, gives .
. By [L5] with divisor write with . Then , so . If were positive it would lie in , so by step 6.1, which with contradicts antisymmetry. Hence is not positive; with this forces , so and .
, by the same argument with in place of : dividing by gives with , and , so as before.
So is a common divisor of and . Moreover every common divisor of and divides by [L7].
Since we have and , so every common divisor satisfies by [L8].
Therefore is the greatest element of , and greatest elements are unique, so by [L6]; the hypothesis that and are not both is what makes that clause of the definition apply.
Hence is the least positive element of by step 6.1, and by step 5.1: the equation is solvable.
Remarks
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Where the work is. Two places, and both are easy to hand-wave. The first is that contains a positive element at all, which is what the hypothesis "not both zero" buys and which is proved through rather than by taking (that would need a case split on which of , is nonzero). The second is the last inequality: that every common divisor is below needs If and then and ; hence the set of divisors of a nonzero integer is bounded above by , not just , because divisibility is not the order of .
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The hypothesis cannot be dropped. At the set is , which has no positive element, so "the least positive element of " names nothing; that is precisely the pair at which is fixed by convention (Common divisor, and the greatest common divisor , with the convention ).
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This is an existence statement. The coefficients come from a least element supplied by well-ordering, so nothing here computes them. The extended Euclidean algorithm: the same descent produces integers with , so Bézout coefficients are computed and not merely shown to exist does compute them.
Depends on
Common divisor, and the greatest common divisor , with the convention
Divisibility in : when for some integer
Divisibility is reflexive and transitive on , and is linear: if and then for all integers ; also implies , and
If and then and ; hence the set of divisors of a nonzero integer is bounded above by
Division with remainder in : for and there are unique with and
The well-ordering principle
The naturals embed in the integers
The natural numbers (von Neumann)
Order on the natural numbers
The absolute value of an integer
Absolute value in : ; exactly when ; ; ; ; and exactly when
The integers as equivalence classes of pairs of naturals
Arithmetic on the integers
Order on the integers
The integers form a commutative ring
The integers form a totally ordered ring