We review and extend several recent results on the existence of the ground state for the nonlinear Schr\"odinger (NLS) equation on a metric graph. By ground state we mean a minimizer of the NLS energy functional constrained to the manifold of fixed $L^2$-norm. In the energy functional we allow for the presence of a potential term, of delta-interactions in the vertices of the graph, and of a power-type focusing nonlinear term. We discuss both subcritical and critical nonlinearity. Under general assumptions on the graph and the potential, we prove that a ground state exists for sufficiently small mass, whenever the constrained infimum of the quadratic part of the energy functional is strictly negative. 查看全文>>