Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/paper-2/12/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2008 Paper 2 12 Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
The integrand is even and decays at both infinity and zero, since . On set , a strictly increasing bijection onto the whole real line. ThenUsing evenness for the negative half-axis givesThe second summand is an integrable odd function, so its integral vanishes. The remaining Gaussian integral givesFor the second integral use separately on each half-axis. The factor becomes , and reversing the transformed limits yields . ThusThese identities are instances of the Gaussian integral with an inverse-square term. Splitting at zero before either change of variables avoids treating a discontinuous transformation as a single bijection.
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