Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/ii/paper-1/1i/a/solution

The Chinese remainder theorem says that if the positive integers are pairwise coprime and , then for arbitrary residue classes there is a unique residue class satisfying
Equivalently, reduction is a ring isomorphism
For existence, put . Pairwise coprimality gives , so Bézout's identity supplies an integer with . Then
has the required residues, because every term except the th is divisible by . If and are two solutions, each divides . Pairwise coprimality then implies that their product divides , proving uniqueness modulo .

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