The density-phase action of a Bose gas follows directly from :
The total derivative integrates to zero for periodic density. Hence
A uniform density fluctuation has nonzero quadratic cost , whereas a uniform phase change has no energy cost. Thus the radial fluctuation is massive in the static quadratic-action sense, while the phase is massless. The number-phase conjugacy term couples their dynamics: this does not imply an additional independent gapped quasiparticle branch in the nonrelativistic Bose gas.
The compact phase winding term vanishes for the smooth zero-winding phonon sector. Globally the phase can wind by while the complex field remains periodic, so that term should not be discarded across all topological sectors without a further argument.
Expand the density-phase action of a Bose gas around and a constant phase. Density and phase are coupled by , and retaining density gradients gives the full quadratic Bogoliubov spectrum. Dropping those gradients is a long-wavelength approximation. A small-fluctuation Gaussian extension around does not exactly remove the original nonnegative-density constraint.