Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-theoretical-physics-ii-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/1/d/solution

Add the one-particle energy term . It is diagonal in the same Fock state basis as the contact interaction between two ring modes. For , the ordered basis gives
For , the middle eigenvalue exceeds the mean of the two endpoint eigenvalues by , so it cannot be the smallest. The ground state is therefore if , and if , with
If , every normalized linear combination of the two endpoint Fock states is a ground state. The same endpoint argument works for general fixed , since the interaction contribution is a concave quadratic function of the mode occupation number.

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