Improving Beckner's bound via Hermite functions

We obtain an improvement of the Beckner's inequality $\| f\|^{2}_{2} -\|f\|^{2}_{p} \leq (2-p) \| \nabla f\|_{2}^{2}$ valid for $p \in [1,2]$ and the Gaussian measure. Our improvement is essential for the intermediate case $p \in (1,2)$, and moreover, we find the natural extension of the inequality for any real $p$.