Sunday, 16 August 2026

Exercise (7.4).15

Prove that if the prime $p= 8k + 1$ then

$$p \mid (2^{\frac{p-1}{2}} - 1) $$


By Proposition (7.15), if $p \equiv 1 \pmod 8$ then 2 is a quadratic residue of $p$.  By Euler's Criterion

$$ 2^{\frac{p-1}{2}} \equiv 1 \pmod p $$

That is,

$$p \mid (2^{\frac{p-1}{2}} - 1) $$