For a cubic-quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation with normalized bulk amplitude one, a straight quantum vortex of integer winding number has radial equation . With , the derivative of the nonlinear term at is . Balancing the order- centrifugal term with the bulk amplitude restoring term proves the displayed tail for a stable nondegenerate bulk state, . A vortex's amplitude tends to one; its full complex field tends to , not a direction-independent constant. At the stated inverse-square expansion cannot cancel the centrifugal term.
For a nonzero uniform wavefunction, the Laplacian vanishes. Dividing the stationary cubic-quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation by yields
Equivalently, the interaction energy density is and its derivative is the chemical potential. Positive local compressibility requires . This stability condition is distinct from the sign of itself.
At fixed particle number , an equilibrium wavefunction is a constrained critical point of the energy functional. Introduce the chemical potential as the Lagrange multiplier for , and impose . The resulting stationary cubic-quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation is
The time-dependent equilibrium has , so its number density is stationary even though its quantum phase changes uniformly. The specified particle number fixes together with the boundary conditions. In an infinite uniform bulk, particle number is understood through a finite volume or a prescribed bulk density.
Treat and its complex conjugate as independent variables in the functional derivative. Integrating the gradient variation by parts, with vanishing boundary terms, gives
The factors follow from and . Thus the cubic-quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation is
For the displayed scaling, assume and . Set
Substituting in the stationary cubic-quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation and dividing by gives
The uniform-state relation proves , so the real bulk amplitude is one; its constant quantum phase can be chosen to make in the zero-winding sector. The unit of distance is the kinetic-to-chemical-potential scale, reducing to the stated healing length convention for purely repulsive two-body coupling.
The positive- assumption is necessary for the printed sign convention. If , the real length is , and the dimensionless linear term is , with interaction coefficients divided by ; the displayed equation with linear term does not follow. At this scaling is undefined. These are limitations of this particular nondimensionalization, not a claim that all cubic-quintic bulk states have positive chemical potential.