Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-2/4/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2021 Paper 2 4 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
Put , so . For the complex exponentiation , choose : the branch cut is the negative imaginary axis. Integrate around the upper half-plane semicircle, with a small semicircular indentation excluding the origin. The only enclosed simple pole is , with residueThe large arc is and the small arc is , so both vanish. On the negative real segment, ; accounting for the direction of traversal, the two real segments therefore sum to , where is the desired positive-axis integral. The residue theorem givesSince ,The endpoint estimates also prove convergence. More generally the same calculation is the fractional-power integral from an upper-half-plane contour, valid for .
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