The Strong 24-Conjecture

Restricted forms of Lagrange’s four-square theorem, in which the representing variables are required to satisfy additional arithmetic conditions, have been studied from several points of view. Among the refinements proposed by Zhi-Wei Sun is the conjecture that every nonnegative integer has a representation $$N=x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2,x,y,z,w\in {\mathbb{Z}}_{\ge 0},$$ for which $$x\text{ and }x+24y\text{ are perfect squares}\mathrm{.}$$ We prove this conjecture for all sufficiently large integers. The proof starts from an elementary parametrization of the two square conditions and combines a semi-linear two-squares sieve with Poisson summation, finite-field cancellation, and switching.