In the real Grassmann-valued classical supersymmetric mechanics variant, impose and . Then , and differentiating the first-order equation gives . The remaining Euler-Lagrange equations reduce to . These solutions have but , which need not vanish: .
For , one obtains and when . At , the limiting solution is , . In either case .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 42 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Odd elements of a Grassmann algebra anticommute, and in particular . For variations with fixed endpoints, move each odd variation to the left before applying integration by parts. For example,The interaction varies as and . Thus variation of the action gives the Euler-Lagrange equationsAll products of and its derivatives commute with the odd variables. These signs are essential for this variant of Grassmann-valued classical supersymmetric mechanics.
The fermion bilinear is constant along a solution:For the energy, direct differentiation now givesSimilarly the given supercharge, denoted , satisfiesA second conserved supercharge issince . The two charges are independent functions on the unrestricted phase space: their coefficient matrix on has determinant , and is invertible wherever its even body is nonzero. They can become dependent on a restricted family of trajectories.
Under and , the bilinear vanishes. Differentiating the first-order equation gives , which is the bosonic Euler-Lagrange equation. The first fermionic equation becomes ; differentiating gives , so the second fermionic equation holds too. This establishes the first-order zero-energy solution in Grassmann supersymmetric mechanics without imposing an additional equation.
Let and . For and , solve and to obtainFor , the nonsingular limiting answer is . These formulas also hold for even initial positions in the Grassmann algebra by ordinary polynomial evaluation. Finally, , so the conserved quantities areThe individual odd supercharges generally do not vanish, although their sum vanishes on this restricted solution.