Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/ii/paper-1/14e/iv/solution

Write with . Then
Take to be a small positively oriented circle around . For , start at , travel to , and avoid the pole at zero by a fixed upper or lower detour. The endpoint factor vanishes at , and the exponential controls .
The finite contour extracts the residue at zero:
Only powers occur, and the coefficient of is nonzero. Thus this solution is a polynomial of degree and, up to normalization, is the Laguerre polynomial :
This also follows from the recurrence in part (i), because and every later coefficient vanishes.

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