Some experiments with Ramanujan-Nagell type Diophantine equations

Abstract

Stiller proved that the Diophantine equation $x^2+119=15\cdot 2^n$ has exactly six solutions in positive integers. Motivated by this result we are interested in constructions of Diophantine equations of Ramanujan-Nagell type $x^2=A{k}^n+B$ with many solutions. Here, $A,B\in \mathbb{Z}$ (thus $A,B$ are not necessarily positive) and $k\in {\mathbb{Z}}_{\ge 2}$ are given integers. In particular, we prove that for each $k$ there exists an infinite set $\mathcal{S}$ containing pairs of integers $(A,B)$ such that for each $(A,B)\in \mathcal{S}$ we have $\gcd (A,B)$ is square-free and the Diophantine equation $x^2=A{k}^n+B$ has at least four solutions in positive integers. Moreover, we construct several Diophantine equations of the form $x^2=A{k}^n+B$ with $k>2$, each containing five solutions in non-negative integers. %For example the equation $y^2=130\cdot 3^n+5550606$ has exactly five solutions with $n=0,6,11,15,16$. We also find new examples of equations $x^2=A{2}^n+B$ having six solutions in positive integers, e.g. the following Diophantine equations has exactly six solutions: \begin{equation*} \begin{array}{ll} x^2= 57\cdot 2^{n}+117440512 & n=0, 14, 16, 20, 24, 25, x^2= 165\cdot 2^{n}+26404 & n=0, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12. \end{array} \end{equation*} Moreover, based on an extensive numerical calculations we state several conjectures on the number of solutions of certain parametric families of the Diophantine equations of Ramanujan-Nagell type.

14 pages, to appear in Galsnik Matematicki