Continuum behavior of lattice QED, discretized with one-sided lattice differences, in one-loop order

A lattice action for QED is considered, where the derivatives in the Dirac operator are replaced by one-sided lattice differences. A systematic expansion in the lattice spacing of the one-loop contribution to the fermion self-energy, vacuum polarization tensor, and vertex function is carried out for an arbitrary choice of one-sided lattice differences. It is shown that only the vacuum polarization tensor possesses the correct continuum limit, while the fermion self-energy and vertex function receive noncovariant contributions. A lattice action, discretized with a fixed choice of one-sided lattice differences, therefore, does not define a renormalizable field theory. The noncovariant contributions can, however, be eliminated by averaging the expression over all possible choices of one-sided lattice differences. copyright 1997 The American Physical Society