[some formatting tweaked, and the question copied from the title to the main body, by YC]
Hi,
I've been struggling a lot to calculate this integral.
$$ \int_0^\infty \frac{k^{n-1}}{\prod_{i=1}^n (k^2+ x_i^2)}\; dk $$ where $x_i$ are constants and $n\geq 1$.
I did the calculation for n=1,2,3,4, with the hope of identifying some form and then find the result by induction. But here is what I got:
n=1: I= (pi/2) * abs(x1)
n=2: I= (1/2) * 1/(x2ˆ(2)-x1ˆ(2)) * log(x2ˆ(2) / x1ˆ(2))
n=3: I= (pi/2) * [abs(x1) (x2ˆ(2)-x3ˆ(2)) +abs(x2) (x3ˆ(2)-x1ˆ(2))+ abs(x3) (x1ˆ(2)-x2ˆ(2))] / [(x2ˆ(2)-x3ˆ(2) (x3ˆ(2)-x1ˆ(2)) (x1ˆ(2)-x2ˆ(2)]
n=4: I= (1/2) * [ A1 log(x1ˆ(2)) + A2 log(x2ˆ(2)) +... A4 log(x4ˆ(2))), where Ai= xiˆ(2) / [ prod (xjˆ(2)-xiˆ(2))]
-->> This makes me think that the result depends on whether n is even or uneven; that is, we would have a form in log( ) for n even, and something in pi/2 for n uneven?
Could you please help me here? What is the correct result and how to get it?
Your help is so much appreciated, many many thanks in advance! Elise