First state the normalization needed for the displayed logarithmic factorization: choose a continuous holomorphic function branch in the strip that tends to zero at both horizontal ends and has sufficient decay for its Cauchy integrals. In particular the index of the kernel along a horizontal line must be zero.
Choose and let , both oriented from left to right. PutThe first is analytic above the lower line and the second below the upper line. On the region between the lines, closing a rectangle gives : the lower horizontal side is traversed forward and the upper side backward. HenceThe equation becomes on the overlap region. With the canonical bounded factors normalized at infinity, these two products glue to a bounded entire function. Part (a) givesThis is Wiener-Hopf factorization with the quotient convention used in this question.
The source hypotheses require a qualification: nonvanishing in the strip and do not by themselves force index zero or a logarithm tending to zero at both ends. For exampleis analytic and nonzero for , tends to one at both ends, but winds once around zero along the real line. A logarithm continued along that line changes by , so it cannot have the stated normalization at both ends. One must first separate the index factor, or allow appropriately subtracted factors and a correspondingly different common-function growth class. The displayed constant conclusion follows under the canonical zero-index assumptions above; it is not an unconditional consequence of the two printed properties of . This is the issue measured by the Index of a Wiener-Hopf kernel.
For the standard canonical Wiener-Hopf factorization, first assume the nonzero kernel has Index of a Wiener-Hopf kernel zero and a continuous analytic logarithm tending to zero at both ends of the strip, with sufficient decay for the Cauchy projections. Choose . Let be the line oriented left to right, with its factor used above that line; let be the line oriented left to right, with its factor used below that line.
For , closing the rectangle between the two lines and using the Cauchy integral formula givesThus . Multiplying gives in the overlap. The canonical factors are analytic, nonzero, and normalized at infinity in their respective half-planes, so part (a) yieldsContours may be shifted within the strip without changing their factors on the appropriate side. When necessary, a subtracted Cauchy kernel fixes convergence and the common normalization constant.
The printed hypotheses omit the index and factor-growth qualifications; alone does not ensure them. An explicit counterexample is on , with and . Both functions are analytic and bounded at infinity in their prescribed half-planes, and the relation holds. If admissible analytic factors made their common product a nonzero constant, would force constant and hence proportional to , impossible because has a pole at in the plus half-plane. The natural factors , instead give the nonconstant common polynomial . Thus the boxed constant conclusion is the intended index-zero result, not a consequence of the literal assumptions alone.