TITLE: Is it possible to find indefinite integral of $\int \frac{1} {{\sin(x)+\sec^2(x)}}\mathrm{d}x$?
QUESTION [17 upvotes]: I am in standard $XI$ (i.e.11) and newbie in learning topic of integration.  My friend asked me to find indefinite integral of the example shown below
$$y=\int \frac{1} {{\sin(x)+\sec^2(x)}} \, \mathrm{d}x \tag 1$$
What I tried until now is I  done substitution as  $m=\sin(x)$
$$\frac{\textrm{d}m}{\textrm{d}x}=\cos(x)$$
Now, converting equation $(1)$ in terms of $m$ becomes as
$$y=\int \frac{(1-m^2)^{1/2}} {{1+m(1-m^2)}} \, \mathrm{d}m$$
but as you can see that it became more complicated than original equation $(1)$
So can anybody help me to compute 
 integration of $\int \frac{1} {\sin(x)+\sec^2(x)} \, \mathrm{d}x$ ?

REPLY [9 votes]: With the usual tangent half-angle substitution, $x=2\arctan t$, the integral becomes:
$$ I = 2\int \frac{(1-t^2)^2}{1+2t+3t^2-4t^3+3t^4+2t^5+t^6}\,dt\tag{1}$$
So, assuming we know the roots of the polynomial $p(t)=1+2t+3t^2-4t^3+3t^4+2t^5+t^6$, we can solve the above integral through partial fraction decomposition. That polynomial is palyndromic, so if $\zeta$ is a root, $\frac{1}{\zeta}$ is a root, too, and the original problem boils down to finding the roots of a third-degree polynomial. 
For instance, by replacing $t+\frac{1}{t}$ with $u$, then $u$ with $2v$, we get:
$$ I = 2\int\frac{\sqrt{u^2-4}}{u^3+2u^2-8}\,du = \int \frac{\sqrt{v^2-1}}{v^3+v^2-1}\,dv\tag{2}$$
and by replacing $v$ with $\cosh z$ we have:
$$ I = \int \frac{\sinh^2 z}{\cosh^3 z+\cosh^2 z-1}\,dz. \tag{3}$$
Anyway, since the discriminant of $v^3+v^2-1$ is $-23$, the closed form of $(1)$ is not nice at all.