Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2006 Paper 2 4 Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
For a pole of order at , the residue is . For the rational integral, close the real-axis contour with an upper semicircle. The poles are double at and simple at , withThe arc integral vanishes as . By the residue theorem the whole real-axis integral is , and evenness givesFor the second calculation, reciprocal expansion of the sine gives . Multiplying by yields . ThereforeAt every nonzero integer , has a simple pole with residue one, giving residue after division by .
The cotangent contour summation uses the positively oriented square of half-side . Its length is and on its boundary. The supplied cotangent bound implies . Its enclosed residues sum to . The residue theorem therefore proves the Basel problem value
