Proposition: Greatest Common Divisor 

Let \(a,b\) be integers and let \(D_{a,b}\) be the set of all common divisors of \(a\) and \(b\):

\[D_{a,b}:=\left\{d\in\mathbb Z : d\mid a\wedge d\mid b\right\}.\]

\(D_{a,b}\) has a unique maximum $\max(D_{a,b})$, called the greates common divisor of \(a\) and \(b\), denoted by

\[\gcd(a,b):=\max(D_{a,b}).\]

We have $\gcd(a,b)\mid a$ and $\gcd(a,b)\mid b.$ Moreover, any divisor $d$ dividing both, $d\mid a$ and $d\mid b$ also divides their greatest common divisor $d\mid \gcd(a,b).$ For this reason, since $d\mid 0$ for all integers $d\neq 0$, we set \(\gcd(0,0):=0\).

Note

The division with quotient can be used to efficiently calculate the $\gcd$ of given two integers $a,b.$ See a Python implementation of the greatest common divisor algorithm.

| | | | | created: 2015-05-30 09:12:47 | modified: 2019-06-27 21:28:30 | by: bookofproofs | references: [701], [1272]

1.Proof: (related to "Greatest Common Divisor")