Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2013 / iii / Paper 75 / 4 / c

The density-phase action of a Bose gas follows directly from $\psi =\sqrt{\rho }{e}^{i\varphi }$:The total derivative integrates to zero for periodic density. HenceA uniform density fluctuation has nonzero quadratic cost $g(\delta \rho {)}^2/2$, 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 $i\delta \rho {\partial }_{\tau }\varphi$ couples their dynamics: this does not imply an additional independent gapped quasiparticle branch in the nonrelativistic Bose gas.

The compact phase winding term $i{\rho }_0\int {\partial }_{\tau }\varphi$ vanishes for the smooth zero-winding phonon sector. Globally the phase can wind by $2\pi$ while the complex field remains periodic, so that term should not be discarded across all topological sectors without a further argument.