Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 ib Paper 3 5C b Solution 2026-10-14
Take the branch of the complex logarithm with and write . Deform the Bromwich contour into a Hankel contour about the negative real axis. The small circle at zero contributes and vanishes; the large closing arcs vanish by the exponential estimates for . On the upper lip , , while on the lower lip it is . Keeping the lip orientations in the Bromwich inversion with a square-root branch cut givesWith , the supplied Gaussian integral evaluates this as . HenceThe inverse is singular but locally integrable at zero, which is compatible with existence of its Laplace transform.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 ib Paper 1 13D Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Choose the principal branch of a multivalued function, , for . The integrand has simple poles at and a branch cut along the negative real axis. Its residues arewhose sum is .
For , close the Bromwich contour to the left using a rectangle with outer real part and horizontal edges at imaginary parts , indenting the cut and zero. On every distant edge, , and . Each edge has length and , so its integral is . The small circle of radius about zero contributes . The tails of the original vertical integral are absolutely bounded by as well.
On the upper and lower banks at , the square roots are and , respectively. With the upper bank traversed toward zero and the lower bank away from zero, their combined integral isThe cut integral converges near zero since is integrable, and at infinity by exponential decay. The residue theorem, followed by and , therefore givesFor , close the Bromwich contour to the right. There are no enclosed poles or cuts, and there. The same distant-edge estimates show for .
Left-closing Bromwich contour with the principal square-root cut, two pole residues, and a small indentation at zero
. Details. For the large- expansion, . Scaling and using the given integral yields . Integration by parts twice gives the next coefficient . The remainder is bounded by . Thus, without needing a globally convergent termwise integration of the local power series,In particular, the requested two leading terms are , interpreted as an additive asymptotic expansion. This is Bromwich inversion with a square-root branch cut.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 ii Paper 3 7E Solution Created 2026-09-23 Updated 2026-09-25
Taking the Laplace transform in and using the zero initial condition givesThe solution bounded as isThe transformed boundary condition isso this is the sinusoidally forced heat equation on a half-line. Integrating in gives
Use the principal square root, with a branch cut along the negative real axis. The Bromwich contour is a vertical line to the right of and the branch point . For , close it in the left half-plane, indent around the cut, and let the large semicircle recede. The simple poles at contributeHence
On the upper and lower sides of the cut, put ; the two values of are and . Their jump and the opposite contour orientations combine to giveThis is precisely Bromwich inversion with a square-root branch cut: the residues produce the permanent periodic response, while the cut integral is the transient that decays with time.
