Past exam of the advanced quantum theory: path integrals and many-particle physics course of the University of Oxford / 2017 / 2 / a

Interpret the two displayed exchange components as belonging to the common nearest-neighbour sum with coefficient $-J$. Write $H_f=|h|$ and, for $h\ne 0$, $s=\mathrm{sgn}h$. The source explicitly fixes $J>0$ but does not separately constrain $h$ in this question; keeping $H_f$ covers either field direction.

For classical vectors of length $S$, define ${\mathbf{q}}_j=(S_j^x,S_j^y)$. The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives ${\mathbf{q}}_j\cdot {\mathbf{q}}_{j+1}\le |{\mathbf{q}}_j||{\mathbf{q}}_{j+1}|\le S^2$, and $h{S}_j^x\le H_{f}S$. Each term is therefore bounded below, soUniform alignment along the field saturates every bound:Equality requires all planar vectors to be parallel with length $S$, and the nonzero field then fixes their direction. At $h=0$, every uniformly oriented vector in the $xy$ plane is a classical ground state:A nonuniform configuration cannot improve these simultaneously saturated bond bounds, including on the periodic ring.