Euler's criterion

In number theory Euler's criterion is a formula for determining whether an integer is a quadratic residue modulo a prime. Precisely,

Let p be an odd prime and a an integer coprime to p. Then^[1]

$a^{\tfrac{p-1}{2}} \equiv \begin{cases} \;\;\,1\pmod{p}& \text{ if there is an integer }x \text{ such that }a\equiv x^2 \pmod{p}\\ -1\pmod{p}& \text{ if there is no such integer.} \end{cases}$

Euler's criterion can be concisely reformulated using the Legendre symbol:^[2]

$\left(\frac{a}{p}\right) \equiv a^{(p-1)/2} \pmod p.$

The criterion first appeared in a 1748 paper by Euler.^[3]

Proof

The proof uses the fact that the residue classes modulo a prime number are a field. See the article prime field for more details. The fact that there are (p − 1)/2 quadratic residues and the same number of nonresidues (mod p) is proved in the article quadratic residue.

If a is 0 mod p, then

$a^{p-1}\equiv 0 \pmod p.$

Otherwise, Fermat's little theorem says that

$a^{p-1}\equiv 1 \pmod p$

which can be written as

$\left( a^{\tfrac{p-1}{2}}-1 \right)\left( a^{\tfrac{p-1}{2}}+1 \right) \equiv 0 \pmod p.$

Since the integers mod p form a field, one or the other of these factors must be congruent to zero.

Now if a is a quadratic residue, a ≡ x²,

$a^{\tfrac{p-1}{2}}\equiv {(x^2)}^{\tfrac{p-1}{2}} \equiv x^{p-1}\equiv1\pmod p.$

So every quadratic residue (mod p) makes the first factor zero.

Lagrange's theorem says that there can be no more than (p - 1)/2 values of a that make the first factor zero. But it is known that there are (p - 1)/2 distinct quadratic residues (mod p) (besides 0). Therefore they are precisely the residue classes that make the first factor zero. The other (p - 1)/2 residue classes, the nonresidues, must make the second factor zero, or they would not satisfy Fermat's little theorem. This is Euler's criterion.

Examples

Example 1: Finding primes for which a is a residue

Let a = 17. For which primes p is 17 a quadratic residue?

We can test prime p's manually given the formula above.

In one case, testing p = 3, we have 17^{(3 − 1)/2} = 17¹ ≡ 2 ≡ −1 (mod 3), therefore 17 is not a quadratic residue modulo 3.

In another case, testing p = 13, we have 17^{(13 − 1)/2} = 17⁶ ≡ 1 (mod 13), therefore 17 is a quadratic residue modulo 13. As confirmation, note that 17 ≡ 4 (mod 13), and 2² = 4.

We can do these calculations faster by using various modular arithmetic and Legendre symbol properties.

If we keep calculating the values, we find:

(17/p) = +1 for p = {13, 19, ...} (17 is a quadratic residue modulo these values)

(17/p) = −1 for p = {3, 5, 7, 11, 23, ...} (17 is not a quadratic residue modulo these values).

Example 2: Finding residues given a prime modulus p

Which numbers are squares modulo 17 (quadratic residues modulo 17)?

We can manually calculate it as:

1² = 1

2² = 4

3² = 9

4² = 16

5² = 25 ≡ 8 (mod 17)

6² = 36 ≡ 2 (mod 17)

7² = 49 ≡ 15 (mod 17)

8² = 64 ≡ 13 (mod 17).

So the set of the quadratic residues modulo 17 is {1,2,4,8,9,13,15,16}. Note that we did not need to calculate squares for the values 9 through 16, as they are all negatives of the previously squared values (e.g. 9 ≡ −8 (mod 17), so 9² ≡ (−8)² = 64 ≡ 13 (mod 17)).

We can find quadratic residues or verify them using the above formula. To test if 2 is a quadratic residue modulo 17, we calculate 2^{(17 − 1)/2} = 2⁸ ≡ 1 (mod 17), so it is a quadratic residue. To test if 3 is a quadratic residue modulo 17, we calculate 3^{(17 − 1)/2} = 3⁸ ≡ 16 ≡ −1 (mod 17), so it is not a quadratic residue.

Euler's criterion is related to the Law of quadratic reciprocity and is used in a definition of Euler–Jacobi pseudoprimes.

Notes

1. Gauss, DA, Art. 106
2. Hardy & Wright, thm. 83
3. Lemmermeyer, p. 4 cites two papers, E134 and E262 in the Euler Archive

References

The Disquisitiones Arithmeticae has been translated from Gauss's Ciceronian Latin into English and German. The German edition includes all of his papers on number theory: all the proofs of quadratic reciprocity, the determination of the sign of the Gauss sum, the investigations into biquadratic reciprocity, and unpublished notes.

• Gauss, Carl Friedrich; Clarke, Arthur A. (translator into English) (1986), Disquisitiones Arithemeticae (Second, corrected edition), New York: Springer, ISBN 0-387-96254-9

• Gauss, Carl Friedrich; Maser, H. (translator into German) (1965), Untersuchungen uber hohere Arithmetik (Disquisitiones Arithemeticae & other papers on number theory) (Second edition), New York: Chelsea, ISBN 0-8284-0191-8

• Hardy, G. H.; Wright, E. M. (1980), An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers (Fifth edition), Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-853171-5

• Lemmermeyer, Franz (2000), Reciprocity Laws: from Euler to Eisenstein, Berlin: Springer, ISBN 3-540-66957-4

External links

• The Euler Archive