Homology and abelian lattice gauge theories

A simple Abelian model with both Higgs and gauge field degrees of freedom is investigated on a simplicial lattice of arbitrary dimension. We use group character expansion for both fields to get a diagrammatic expansion of the partition function. The diagrams consist of gauge group representation valued 1- and 2-chains. The diagrams are proved to satisfy the constraint that the boundary of the 2-chain representing the gauge field is equal to the 1-chain representing the Higgs field. Otherwise they identically vanish. Simple consequences of this are current conservation and the vanishing of non-null-homologous Wilson loops. Finally we use this picture for giving a lowest order estimate for the critical length of a string. This is the length at which the flux-tube string connecting two opposite charges is likely to break into two pieces due to pair creation.