Analytic approximations to hamiltonian lattice field theories. Pt. 2

It is shown that at weak coupling physical quantities in hamiltonian U(1) lattice gauge (or global symmetric) theories of arbitrary dimension are provided as expectation values in a d - 1 dimensional lagrangian Z(2) gauge (or spin) theory with calculable long-range interactions. Confinement and the existence of a magnetic mass gap are equivalent to the existence of infinite-range plaquette-plaquette (or link-link) correlations in the spin field. The existence of infinite range correlations is simply related to the dimension of the lattice and the transformation property of the order parameter. As expected, only the d = 2 + 1 U(1) gauge theory confines electric charges at all non-vanishing coupling. (orig.)