Past exam of the short options paper of the physics Prelims of the University of Oxford / 2019 / S1 / 3 / e

Shrink the positive outer contour to the branch cut $[-1,1]$. On its upper bank the chosen branch of a multivalued function has $\sqrt{x^2-1}=i\sqrt{1-x^2}$ and on the lower bank it has the negative of this value. The upper bank runs from $1$ to $-1$, and the lower bank runs from $-1$ to $1$. The endpoint circles contribute $O(\sqrt{ϵ})$ and vanish. HenceThe change of variables $x=\sin t$ independently reduces the result to the integral of ${\sin }^{4}t$ over $[-\pi /2,\pi /2]$.