Write
Projecting the equation onto modes gives the Fourier-Galerkin matrix for a drift-diffusion equation
where for .
For , only
are nonzero. Hence
The column belonging to the constant mode is zero, so
Remove that zero mode. In every remaining row , the sum of the magnitudes of the off-diagonal entries is at most ; for , the would-be coupling to the removed zero mode vanishes. The diagonal entry is . Gershgorin's theorem therefore places every eigenvalue of the nonconstant block in
Together with the zero eigenvalue, all eigenvalues of have nonpositive real part.