Wednesday, 15 July 2026

Exercise (7.2).4

Show that $a^{2n}$ ($n$ is a natural number) is a quadratic residue of a prime $p$, provided $p \not \mid a$.


We consider

$$ x^2 \equiv a^{2n} \pmod p $$

By proposition (3.14b) we have

$$ x \equiv \pm a^n \pmod p $$

Here $a^n$ is an integer is not divisible by $p$, because $p \not \mid a \implies p \not \mid a^n $.

And so $a^{2n}$ is a quadratic residue of prime $p$.