1996 IMO Problems/Problem 3

Problem

Let $S$ denote the set of nonnegative integers. Find all functions $f$ from $S$ to itself such that

$f(m+f(n))=f(f(m))+f(n)$ $\forall m,n \in S$

Solution

Plugging in m = 0, we get f(f(n)) = f(n) $\forall n \in S$. With m = n = 0, we get f(0) = 0.

If there are no fixed points of this function greater than $0$, then $f(x) = 0 \forall x \in \mathbb{N}$, which is a valid solution.

Let $n_{0}$ be the smallest fixed point of $f(x)$ such that $n_{0} > 0$. $\implies f(n_{0}) = n_{0}$. Plugging $m = n = n_{0}$, we get $f(2n_{0}) = 2f(n_{0})$.


By an easy induction, we get $f(kn_{0}) = kf(n_{0}) \forall k \in \mathbb{N}$.


Let $n_{1}$ be another fixed point greater than $n_{0}$. Let $n_{1} = qn_{0} + r$, where $r < n_{0}$.


So, $f(n_{1}) = f(qn_{0} + r) = f(r + f(qn_{0})) = f(r) + qn_{0} = r + qn_{0}$.


$\implies f(r) = r$. But, $r < n_{0} \implies r = 0$. This means that the set of all fixed points of $f(x)$ is ${0, n_{0}, 2n_{0}, 3n{0}, ...}$.


Let $x < n_{0}$ and $f(x) = b$. So, $b = f(x) = f(f(x)) = f(b)$. So, $b$ is also a fixed point, which means that the functional values of non-fixed points are permutations of the fixed points. So let $f(k) = a_{k}n_{0}$, where $a_{k} \in \mathbb{N}$.


Now let $n = qn_{0} + r$, where $r < n$. So $f(n) = f(qn_{0} + r) = f(r + f(qn_{0})) = f(r) + f(qn_{0}) = f(r) + qn_{0} = a_{r}n_{0} + qn_{0} = n_{0}\dot(a_{r} + q)$. So there are two general solutions, $f(x) = 0$ (where the only fixed point is 0) or $f(x) = n_{0}\dot(a_{r} + q)$ where $n_{0}$ is the smallest fixed point greater than 0 (in the second case), $f(r) = a_{r}n_{0}$ where $r < n_{0}$ and q is the quotient when $n$ is divided by $n_{0}$.

See Also

1996 IMO (Problems) • Resources
Preceded by
Problem 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 Followed by
Problem 4
All IMO Problems and Solutions