The tadpole graph consists of a circle and a half-line attached at a vertex. We analyze standing waves of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with quintic power nonlinearity equipped with the Neumann–Kirchhoff boundary conditions at the vertex. The profile of the standing wave with the frequency ω∈(-∞,0)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\omega \in (-\infty ,0)$$\end{document} is characterized as a global minimizer of the quadratic part of energy constrained to the unit sphere in L6\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$L^6$$\end{document}. The set of standing waves includes the set of ground states, which are the global minimizers of the energy at constant mass (L2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$L^2$$\end{document}-norm), but it is actually wider. While ground states exist only for a certain interval of masses, the standing waves exist for every ω∈(-∞,0)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\omega \in (-\infty ,0)$$\end{document} and correspond to a bigger interval of masses. It is proven that there exist critical frequencies ω1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\omega _1$$\end{document} and ω0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\omega _0$$\end{document} with -∞<ω1<ω0<0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$-\infty< \omega _1< \omega _0 < 0$$\end{document} such that the standing waves are the ground state for ω∈[ω0,0)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\omega \in [\omega _0,0)$$\end{document}, local constrained minima of the energy for ω∈(ω1,ω0)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\omega \in (\omega _1,\omega _0)$$\end{document} and saddle points of the energy at constant mass for ω∈(-∞,ω1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\omega \in (-\infty ,\omega _1)$$\end{document}. Proofs make use of the variational methods and the analytical theory for differential equations.