[Math] Evaluate $\int_0^{\infty} \frac{\log(x)dx}{x^2+a^2}$ using contour integration

complex integrationcomplex-analysiscontour-integration

This question is Exercise 10 of Chapter 3 of Stein and Shakarchi's Complex Analysis.

Show that if $a>0$, then

$$\int_0^{\infty} \frac{\log(x)dx}{x^2+a^2}=\frac{\pi \log(a)}{2a}.$$

The hint is to integrate over the boundary of the domain
$\{z: \epsilon<|z|<R, \Im(z)>0\}.$

I'm not sure what to do with the integral over the outer arc.

Best Answer

Take these lines as a long comment and not an answer, but the integral is trivial to compute through real-analytic techniques. For any $a>0$ we have:

$$ \int_{0}^{+\infty}\frac{\log(x/a)}{a^2+x^2}\,dx = \frac{1}{a}\int_{0}^{+\infty}\frac{\log x}{1+x^2}=\color{red}{0} $$ since the substitution $x\mapsto\frac{1}{x}$ gives $\int_{1}^{+\infty}\frac{\log x}{1+x^2}\,dx = -\int_{0}^{1}\frac{\log x}{1+x^2}\,dx $.
On the other hand, $$ \int_{0}^{+\infty}\frac{\log(a)}{a^2+x^2}\,dx = \frac{\log a}{a}\int_{0}^{+\infty}\frac{dx}{1+x^2}=\color{red}{\frac{\pi\log a}{2a}}.$$

If you want to use contour integration, you may take a semicircular contour in the right half-plane with three bulges around $z=0$ (singularity for $\log z$) and $z=\pm i a$ (singularities for $\frac{1}{z^2+a^2}$), then apply the residue theorem. The integral over the outer arc is vanishing as $R\to +\infty$ since it is bounded by $\frac{2\pi\log R}{R}$ in absolute value for any $R$ big enough.

Related Question