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An attractive one-dimensional delta potential has one even exponentially decaying bound state.

When a perturbation preserves each unperturbed degenerate block and has no inter-block coupling, diagonalizing each block can give the exact spectrum.

If the perturbation is already diagonal in a basis of a degenerate eigenspace, those basis vectors receive its diagonal entries as first-order shifts.

For the normalizationa dark soliton of speed $0\le U<1/\sqrt{2}$ is

For $\psi =e^{-iEt}f(x)$ with real $f$, the defocusing equation $i{\psi }_t+{\psi }_{xx}-2|\psi {|}^2\psi =0$ has first integralA nonzero smooth function tending to zero at both infinities cannot satisfy this identity: a nonzero extremum requires $f^2=E>0$, but then the right side is negative for sufficiently small nonzero $f$.

A forced harmonic oscillator responds at both its natural and forcing frequencies.

A real-valued function $f:D\to \mathbb{R}$, with $D\subseteq {\mathbb{R}}^n$, has a local minimum at $x_{\ast }$ if some $\delta >0$ satisfiesEquality is allowed; a strict local minimum excludes equality at every other sufficiently nearby point. The comparison uses a neighbourhood relative to the domain of a function. On an open set, this is an ordinary small ball around $x_{\ast }$. At an endpoint, only points belonging to the domain of a function are tested. Some elementary texts reserve "local" for interior points; here endpoints are allowed under the relative convention, but the zero-gradient condition still requires an interior point.

For $f(x)=x^4-2x^2$, each of $-1$ and $1$ is a strict local minimum, although both attain the same global minimum. For $h(x)=|x|$, zero is a strict local minimum despite the missing derivative. Thus the definition compares values and does not require differentiability.

A local minimum describes a valley that cannot be improved by a sufficiently small move; mathematical optimization also asks whether a better value lies farther away. At a smooth interior local minimum, the gradient is zero. If the function is twice continuously differentiable nearby, its Hessian matrix is positive semidefinite: restrict to a line through the point and its second derivative is nonnegative. The converse fails for a degenerate Hessian matrix, as $-x^4$ at zero shows.

The critical set of a differentiable map consists of the points where its derivative fails to have full rank.

Each broken continuous internal-symmetry generator normally produces a massless Goldstone mode; for a symmetry breaking pattern $G\to H$, their number is $\dim G-\dim H$ in the standard relativistic setting.

Homogeneity at a fixed point relates thermodynamic critical exponents to the correlation-length exponent $\nu$ and anomalous dimension $\eta$.

A Wilsonian renormalization-group step integrates out short-distance modes, rescales coordinates to restore the cutoff, and rescales fields to normalize a chosen kinetic term.

The upper critical dimension is the dimension above which the Gaussian or mean-field fixed point controls critical exponents. It is four for the ordinary Ising critical point and three for its tricritical point.

Landau theory expands an effective free energy analytically in powers of an order parameter, constrained by symmetry.

An order parameter vanishes in a symmetric phase and becomes nonzero when that symmetry is spontaneously broken.

The density parameter is $\Omega =\rho /{\rho }_{\mathrm{crit}}$. In a Friedmann universe, its departure from one measures the spatial-curvature term relative to the density or expansion term.

The Friedmann equation relates this ratio to spatial curvature and the expansion rate; the parameter and the evolution equations are distinct concepts.

The Levi-Civita connection is the unique torsion-free connection compatible with the metric; its coefficients are the Christoffel symbols formed from first metric derivatives.

For $W_{\mu \nu }$,

Parallel transport along a path $\gamma$ sends an initial fiber vector to the endpoint of the unique horizontal lift through that vector. Reversing the path gives the inverse linear map.

A tensor of type $(r,s)$ has $r$ contravariant and $s$ covariant indices. Taking a covariant derivative adds one covariant index, while an outer tensor product adds the corresponding contravariant and covariant index counts.

The covariant divergence contracts a covariant-derivative index with a contravariant tensor index. For a mixed rank-two tensor it is ${\nabla }_{\mu }{T}^{\mu }{}_{\nu }$.