I'm really stuck on this integral. I want to believe there is a closed form for it but I'm really unable to find it. WFA cannot find one either. I think it may be possible to use Feynman's Trick and reduce it to something easier but I can't find a good parameterisation that gives something workable. So far, I have factored the denominator to be $(x^2+x-1)(x^2+x+1)$ and have tried to parametrise like
$$I(a) = \displaystyle \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{\ln(a(x^2+1))}{(x^2+x-1)(x^2+x+1)}dx$$
Which looks promising but after differentiating and integrating (via symbolic math software) I get $I'(a)=\frac{\pi}{\sqrt{3}a}$ and I can't do anything to retrieve $I(1)$ since $I(0)$ is not defined. Performing partial fraction decomposition gives
$$\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{x\ln(x^2+1)+\ln(x^2+1)}{2(x^2+x+1)} - \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{x\ln(x^2+1)-\ln(x^2+1)}{2(x^2-x+1)}$$
I am unsure where to go from there. Can anyone give me a hint at the paramterisation if that even is the right approach or if a closed form for this integral even exists? WFA says the decimal expansion is 0.743763...


Following Riemann'sPointyNose's suggestion, take $$I(a) := \int_{-\infty}^\infty \frac{\log((a x)^2 + 1)}{x^4 + x^2 + 1} dx,$$ so that the desired integral is $I(1)$. Then, $I(0) = 0$, and differentiating with respect to $a$ gives $$I'(a) = 2 a \int_{-\infty}^\infty \frac{x^2 \,dx}{(a^2 x^2 + 1) (x^4 + x^2 + 1)} ,$$ which is rational. One could decompose the integrand using partial fractions and integrate term-by-term. This computation is straightforward but tedious; it can at least be simplified some by exploiting the evenness of the integrand to reduce to a determination of $3$ coefficients instead of $6$.
Instead, we'll set up and evaluate an appropriate contour integral and apply the Residue Theorem. Denote $g(z) := \frac{2a z^2 \,dz}{(a^2 z^2 + 1) (z^4 + z^2 + 1)}$ and denote by $\Gamma_R$ the contour in the diagram, where $R > \operatorname{max}\left(1, \frac{1}{a}\right)$, and $\textrm{I}$ and $\textrm{II}$ the indicated arcs.
First, $$\lim_{R \to \infty} \int_\textrm{I} g(z) \,dz = 2 a \int_{-\infty}^\infty \frac{x^2 \,dx}{(a^2 x^2 + 1) (x^4 + x^2 + 1)} = I'(a) .$$ Comparing the degrees of the numerator and denominator $g(z)$ gives that $\int_\textrm{II} g(z) \,dz \in O(R^{-3})$; in particular $$\lim_{R \to \infty} \int_\textrm{II} g(z) \,dz = 0 ,$$ so $$I'(a) = \oint_{\Gamma_R} g(z) \,dz .$$ We evaluate the integral with the Residue Theorem. The poles of $g(z)$ inside the contour are at $\frac{i}{a}, e^{\pi i / 3}, e^{2 \pi i / 3}$, and all are simple; the residues of $g$ there are: \begin{align*} \operatorname{Res}\left(g(z); \frac{i}{a}\right) &= \frac{i a^2}{a^4 - a^2 + 1} \\ \operatorname{Res}\left(g(z); e^{\pi i / 3}\right) &= \frac{a}{2(a^4 - a^2 + 1)} \left(-(a^2 - 1) - \frac{1}{\sqrt{3}} (a^2 + 1) i \right)\\ \operatorname{Res}\left(g(z); e^{2 \pi i / 3}\right) &= \frac{a}{2(a^4 - a^2 + 1)} \left(\phantom{-}(a^2 - 1) - \frac{1}{\sqrt{3}} (a^2 + 1) i \right) \end{align*} So, taking the limit as $R \to \infty$ gives $$I'(a) = \oint_{\Gamma_R} g(z) \,dz = 2 \pi i \sum \operatorname{Res}(g(z), z_i) = \frac{2 \pi}{\sqrt{3}} \frac{a}{a^2 + \sqrt{3} a + 1} .$$
Thus, the original integral is \begin{align*} I(1) &= I(0) + \int_0^1 I'(a) \,da\\ &= \frac{2 \pi}{\sqrt{3}} \int_0^1 \frac{a \,da}{a^2 + \sqrt{3} a + 1} \\ &= \left.\frac{\pi}{\sqrt{3}} \log (a^2 + a \sqrt{3} + 1) - 2 \pi \arctan (2 a + \sqrt{3})\right\vert_0^1 \\ &= \boxed{\frac{\pi}{\sqrt{3}} \log(2 + \sqrt{3}) - \frac{\pi^2}{6}} , \end{align*} which agrees with the numerical computation in the question statement. In the last line we used that $\tan \frac{5 \pi}{12} = 2 + \sqrt{3}$, which can be derived, e.g., from the angle sum formula for $\tan$.