Dynamical breaking of chiral symmetry in lattice gauge theories

We generalize the variational block-spin methods developed earlier to show that spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetries and the associated massless Goldstone particles arise naturally within the context of strong-coupling lattice gauge theory. Our calculations show the importance of preserving continuous chiral symmetry when transcribing the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) of massless quarks onto the lattice. The meson sector is analyzed for both one and three spatial dimensions, and the criteria for recognizing Nambu-Goldstone phenomena are identified. The relation of these results to continuum QCD and to general properties of observed hadrons is also discussed.