# Order of the product of coprime integers is the product of their orders.

I'd like some help completing the following proof:

Let $p$ be a prime number and let $a$ be an integer such that $a\not\equiv 0 \mod p$. Let $a$ have order $r$ modulo $p$ and $b$ have order $s$ modulo $p$. Prove that if $r$ and $s$ are coprime, then $ab$ has order $rs$ modulo $p$.

My attempt: $(ab)^{rs}=a^{rs}b^{rs} =(a^r)^s (b^s)^r \equiv 1 \mod p$. So we now just need to show that there are no positive integers $k$ smaller $rs$ such that $(ab)^k \equiv 1 \mod p$. Take $k$ to be the order of $ab$ modulo $p$. Then we know (I have previously proved this) that $k \mid rs$.

This is as far as I have got. I realise that I haven't used the assumption about r and s being coprime yet but I can't work out how to apply it.

Let $k$ denote the order of $ab$ modulo $p$. Then we have that:
$$1 \equiv (ab)^{rk} \equiv a^{rk}b^{rk} \equiv b^{rk} \mod p$$
Then we have that $s \mid rk$, but as $\gcd(r,s) = 1$ we have that $s \mid k$. Similarly we prove that $r \mid k$ and hence $rs \mid k$. As you have already proven that $k \mid rs$ we conclude that $k=rs$.