Averaging operations for lattice gauge theories

Usually renormalization group transformations are defined by some averaging operations. In this paper we study such operations for lattice gauge fields and for gauge transformations. We are interested especially in characterizing some classes of field configurations on which the averaging operations are regular (e.g., analytic). These results will be used in subsequent papers on the renormalization group method in lattice gauge theories.Research supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant PHY-82-03669