Iterated Mayer expansion for classical gases at low temperatures

We derive iterated Mayer expansions for classical gases and establish recursive bounds which control their convergence. These bounds are useful for gases with two body forces which are strong and possibly attractive at distances that are short compared to their range. Our procedure is based on splitting the potential into pieces of decreasing strength and increasing range. This may be called a renormalization group treatment of a classical gas. We apply our results to Yukawa lattice gas models and obtain convergence of series expansions for the pressure for a range of parameters (temperature, fugacities, range of the interaction) that was inaccessible before. Application to 3-dimensionalU(1) lattice gauge theory (Coulomb gas,Z-ferromagnet) will be made elsewhere.Work supported in part by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft