For a normalized state and a self-adjoint operator with finite second moment, the quantum uncertainty is defined by . Since is real,
In an energy eigenstate of the quantum harmonic oscillator,
Discarding the nonnegative squared means proves the stated lower bound. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is , following from . Applying the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality to the two variance contributions gives
Here is the oscillator frequency. The bound is the ground-state energy; equality requires zero means and the appropriate minimum-uncertainty width.