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

Put $s=1/n$, so $0<s<1$. For the complex exponentiation $z^s$, choose $-\pi /2<\arg z<3\pi /2$: the branch cut is the negative imaginary axis. Integrate $z^s/(a^2+z^2)$ around the upper half-plane semicircle, with a small semicircular indentation excluding the origin. The only enclosed simple pole is $z=ia$, with residueThe large arc is $O(R^{s-1})$ and the small arc is $O({ϵ}^{s+1})$, so both vanish. On the negative real segment, $z^s=e^{i\pi s}|z{|}^s$; accounting for the direction of traversal, the two real segments therefore sum to $(1+e^{i\pi s})I$, where $I$ is the desired positive-axis integral. The residue theorem givesSince $1+e^{i\pi s}=2e^{i\pi s/2}\cos (\pi s/2)$,The endpoint estimates also prove convergence. More generally the same calculation is the fractional-power integral from an upper-half-plane contour, valid for $-1<s<1$.