Orders and Primitive Roots

Vedantu RMO/INMO camp

Aharshi Roy
Updated 6 October 2023

Whenever in this handout I use a and p, it is always meant to be a ∈ Z

and p being a prime such that p ∤ a (unless specified otherwise).

§1 Warm-Up
I suppose many of you already know these two results but still would not hurt to cite
them atleast.

Theorem 1.1 (Fermat’s Little Theorem)

We always have ap−1 ≡ 1 (mod p).

Next theorem is just the generalized version of FlT.

Theorem 1.2 (Euler’s Theorem)

If n ∈ N and gcd(a, n) = 1, we must have aφ(n) ≡ 1 (mod n).

Proof. Let a1 , a2 , . . . , aφ(n) be all the distinct relatively prime residues modulo n.
Then see that it is not hard to see that a · a1 , a · a2 , . . . , a · aϕ(n) when written in the
reduced form modulo n is exactly same as the set we mentioned above. Hence we get

a1 . . . aφ(n) ≡ aφ(n) · a1 . . . aφ(n) (mod n) ⇐⇒ aφ(n) ≡ 1 (mod n)

§2 Orders
Definition 2.1. The order of a (mod p) (written as ordp (a) is defined to be the smallest
positive integer m such that am ≡ 1 (mod p).
The existence of orders can be proved by Fermat’s Little Theorem. Now we prove the
most important fact about orders.

Theorem 2.2 (Fundamental Theorem of Orders)

ak ≡ 1 (mod p) ⇐⇒ ordp (a) | k.

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Orders and Primitive Roots Updated 6 October 2023

Proof. Backward direction is trivial.

For the forward direction, by the division algorithm let r be the remainder when k is
divided by ordp (a). And so then we get that ar ≡ 1 (mod p) but if r > 0 then the
minimality of orp (a) is being exploited and hence we must have r = 0. ■

Proposition 2.3
Let p > 2 be a prime then p ≡ 1 (mod 4) if and only if p | n2 + 1 for some n ∈ Z.

Proof. Since p ≡ 1 (mod 4) then see that

 2
p−1

! ≡ −1 (mod p)
2
by Wilson’s Theorem.

For the converse; if x2 ≡ −1 (mod p) → x4 ≡ 1 (mod p) and so ordp (x) | gcd(4, p − 1).
But if ordp (x) = 1 or 2 then x2 ≡ 1 (mod p) which is not the case (notice that p > 2)
and hence ordp (x) = 4 and so 4 | p − 1. ■

§3 Primitive Roots

Theorem 3.1
Let p be a prime. Then there always exists an integer g such that ordp (g) = p − 1.
And so g is called a primitive root of p.

Proof. We are not actually going to prove the theorem here since it uses cyclotomic
polynomials. But for experts, as a hint you can consider Φp (X) | X p − 1 and try to see
what happens to the factors modulo p. ■

One of the key take-back of this theorem is that given a primitive root g, each nonzero
residue modulo p can be uniquely expressed by g e for e =, . . . , p − 1.

One can actually extend primitive roots to natural numbers as well where we say
a is a primitive root modulo n iff ordn (a) = φ(n).

Theorem 3.2 (General Theorem of Primitive roots)

A primitive roots modulo n exists iff n = 2, 4, pk or p2k , where p is an odd prime.

Proof. We will not go into the details of the proof again. But again for the experts,
the forward direction is not that bad as you have to carefully use Chinese Remainder
Theorem but the backward direction can be tricky but still not too bad. ■

§4 Problems
Some of these problems might use more than just orders.

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Problem 4.1 (Classic). Find all integers n ≥ 1 such that n | 2n − 1.

Problem 4.2. Let p be a prime and n ∈ N. Determine the remainder (as a function of
n and p) when 1n + 2n + · · · + (p − 1)n is divided by p.
Problem 4.3 (China TST 2006). Find all positive integers a and n for which n divides
(a + 1)n − an .
Problem 4.4 (By Ali Gurel). Solve a11 + 11b11 + 111c11 = 0 over integers.
Problem 4.5 (Romania TST 1996). Find all primes p and q such that for every integer
n we have the number n3pq − n ≡ 0 (mod 3pq).
Problem 4.6 (IMO 1990). Find all positive integers n such that n2 | 2n + 1.
Problem 4.7 (USA TST 2003). Find all ordered triples of primes (p, q, r) such that

p | q r + 1, q | rp + 1, r | pq + 1.