Evaluate
where is the right half of the circle (that is, ), traversed in the direction of increasing .
Fix the path and its endpoints. The right half of runs between and through . Increasing means we start at and end at . Knowing the endpoints matters because part of the integrand will turn out to be path-independent.
Test for exactness before parametrising. With and ,
These are not equal, so the field is not conservative and the whole integral is not path independent. But the mismatch is only in the and terms.
Split off the exact part. Notice that
so those two terms form a perfect differential and depend only on the endpoints:
Parametrise the remaining piece. For use , with from to (this keeps and makes increase, matching the required direction). Then , and :
Use symmetry, then substitute. is odd on a symmetric interval, so its integral is . For the other term put :
Add the two contributions. The line integral is
which matches a direct numerical evaluation of the parametrised integral to five decimal places.
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