A phase cell approach to Yang-Mills theory

For the abelian Yang-Mills theory, a one-to-one correspondence is established between continuum gauge potentials and compatible lattice configurations on an infinite sequence of finer and finer lattices. The compatibility is given by a block spin transformation determining the configuration on a lattice in terms of the configuration on any finer lattice. Thus the configuration on any single lattice is not an approximation to the continuum field, but rather a subset of the variables describing the field.It is proven that the Wilson actions on the lattices monotonically increase to the continuum action as one passes to finer and finer lattices. Configurations that minimize the continuum action, subject to having the variables fixed on some lattice, are studied.This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-85-02074