Choose real eigenfunctions with . For positive modes, self-adjointness and integration by parts diagonalize the energy:
At temperature , the canonical ensemble is a product of centered Gaussian distributions. The equipartition theorem, with Boltzmann constant , gives
The resulting thermal covariance of an elastic filament is
For an unnormalized eigenfunction of squared L2 norm , divide its summand by . This normalization factor cannot be absorbed silently into the modal variance.
For clamped boundary conditions at both ends, the inverse of has Green function, for ,
It is cubic on each side of , satisfies the four clamped conditions, has continuous first two derivatives, and has unit jump in its third derivative. Thus , and its eigenfunction expansion is the sum above. In particular,
These finite variances require removal of every zero-energy filament mode. An unconstrained free-free elastic filament can translate and tilt at no energy cost; a torqued-torqued elastic filament can translate. Their unrestricted Boltzmann distributions are not normalizable, so the full displacement variance is undefined. Fix those rigid degrees of freedom before applying the positive-mode formula.