The conical shape near the degeneracy at the origin makes it immediately clear that this point cannot be stationary, that is, the system is unstable against asymmetric distortions, which leads to a symmetry lowering. In this particular case there are infinitely many isoenergetic JT distortions. The Q i giving these distortions are arranged in a circle, as shown by the red curve in the figure. Quadratic coupling or cubic elastic terms lead to a warping along this "minimum energy path", replacing this infinite manifold by three equivalent potential minima and three equivalent saddle points. In other JT systems, linear coupling results in discrete minima.