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Solution: Kth Smallest Product of Two Sorted Arrays

Explore how to efficiently identify the kth smallest product from pairs in two sorted arrays using a modified binary search approach. Understand the counting strategy for products under a candidate value and how to narrow down the solution in logarithmic time, even with negative numbers and zero included in the arrays.

Statement

You are given two sorted 00-indexed integer arrays nums1 and nums2, along with an integer k.

Consider all possible products formed by nums1[i] * nums2[j], where i ranges over all valid indices of nums1 and j ranges over all valid indices of nums2. Return the kthk^{th} smallest product among all such pairs, using 11-based indexing.

Note: Both nums1 and nums2 are sorted in non-decreasing order. The arrays may contain negative numbers and zero, so the products can be negative, zero, or positive.

Constraints:

  • 11 \leq nums1.length, nums2.length 5×104\leq 5 \times 10^4

  • 105-10^5 \leq nums1[i], nums2[j] 105\leq 10^5 ...