Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-metric-spaces-and-complex-analysis-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/5/c/ii/solution

Put and . Traverse the rectangle with positive orientation of a contour, taking . Part (i) shows that the only enclosed poles of are
They are simple poles because
The residue formula for a quotient at a simple denominator zero gives
Their imaginary terms cancel and their residues sum to . Thus Cauchy's residue theorem gives
Figure 1.
The positively oriented contour encloses the two poles at
. The top edge is traversed from right to left. Its reversed orientation of a contour and the imaginary shift in the numerator produce times the desired real integral. Details.
The choice of numerator makes the horizontal sides useful. The hyperbolic sine satisfies , so . Consequently the lower and upper contour integrals, with their actual orientations, add to
It remains to justify discarding both vertical sides. On either side , , the reverse triangle inequality and part (b)(ii) imply
This lower bound is positive for sufficiently large . Also and each vertical side has length . The estimation lemma bounds the absolute value of the sum of the vertical contributions by
The real improper integral converges absolutely, since its integrand is continuous on the real axis and decays like at infinity. Combining all four sides and taking gives
Therefore
An independent real-variable check uses the hyperbolic tangent substitution : the integral becomes . Its antiderivative uses the inverse hyperbolic tangent, giving . As , this tends to , agreeing with and checking the factor of two.

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