A holomorphic function integrates to zero around a closed contour, so a nonzero contour integral measures how the function fails to be holomorphic inside. The failure is concentrated at isolated singularities, and the precise quantity it contributes is the residue, the one Laurent coefficient that survives integration around the singularity. The residue theorem turns a contour integral into a finite sum of residues, and the consequence is a method for evaluating real integrals by closing them into the complex plane, including the Fourier integrals that define the characteristic functions of probability. This post proves the residue theorem and applies it [1], [2].
#The Laurent series and the residue
Near an isolated singularity a holomorphic function has a series expansion with negative powers.
A function holomorphic on a punctured disk has a Laurent series converging there. The singularity is a pole of order when and for , and the residue is .
The residue is singled out among all the Laurent coefficients because it is the only one that survives integration around the singularity.
For a small positively oriented circle about lying in the annulus of convergence of the Laurent series, for every integer and . Consequently .
Parametrise , so . For the integral over of is zero by periodicity, and for the integrand is , integrating to . The Laurent series converges uniformly on every compact subset of the annulus, and the circle is one such subset, so it may be integrated term by term, and only the term contributes, giving .
#The residue theorem
Let be holomorphic on a simply connected domain except at finitely many isolated singularities, and let be a positively oriented simple closed contour enclosing the singularities and no others. Then
Around each singularity draw a small positively oriented circle inside , disjoint from the others. The region between and the circles contains no singularity, so is holomorphic there, and the Cauchy theorem for the multiply connected region, cut into simply connected pieces by slits, gives , the slit edges cancelling in pairs. By Lemma 2 each circle integral is , and summing gives Equation (1).
The residues are computable without finding the whole Laurent series. At a simple pole the residue is the limit of .
If has a simple pole at , then . If with holomorphic, , and a simple zero at , then .
At a simple pole , so as . For the quotient, and give as , so , which is the residue by the first part.
#The Cauchy distribution
The method of contours evaluates real integrals by completing them into a closed loop, and the cleanest example is the Fourier integral of the Cauchy density.
For every real , .
Take first. The integrand extends to , holomorphic except at the simple poles . For , close the real interval with the semicircular arc of radius in the upper half plane, a contour enclosing the single pole . By the residue theorem,
the residue computed from the quotient form of Proposition 4 with and , so and , equivalently evaluated at . On the arc, with gives since and , while , so the arc integral is bounded by as . Letting in Equation (2) leaves . The case needs no separate contour. Writing , the substitution leaves the even density fixed and sends , so , and is even in . Hence for every real .
Dividing by identifies the result as the characteristic function of the Cauchy distribution with density , namely , a function continuous everywhere but not differentiable at the origin, reflecting the absence of a finite mean, which the first derivative of the characteristic function at would supply. The computation is impossible by real methods, since the antiderivative of has no elementary form, yet the residue theorem produces the exact value from a single pole. The Fourier transforms of probability and the inversion integrals that recover a density from its characteristic function follow the same pattern, the contour closing what the real line leaves open and the residue supplying the answer.