Using the momentum operator and its commutator with multiplication by , expansion of the factorized quantum Hamiltonian gives
The first-order zero-mode equation integrates to
For , its exponent is . It decays at both ends exactly when is even. If is even it grows at negative infinity. Thus a nonzero square-integrable zero mode exists exactly for odd .
For the Gaussian zero mode is . More generally, on normalized states with finite second moments and the usual integration-by-parts boundary conditions, is nonnegative. With zero means this implies, for every ,
Minimizing the quadratic in at yields
The Gaussian mode attains equality. The argument concerns the same state for the whole positive family of factorized operators, which permits the minimization.