Contractor renormalization group method: A new computational technique for lattice systems

The contractor renormalization group (CORE) method, a new approach to solving Hamiltonian lattice systems, is introduced. The method combines contraction and variational techniques with the real-space renormalization group approach. It applies to lattice systems of infinite extent and is ideal for studying phase structure and critical phenomena. The CORE approximation is systematically improvable and can treat systems with dynamical fermions. The method is tested using the (1+1)-dimensional Ising model