ar X iv : h ep - l at / 9 70 90 93 v 1 2 3 Se p 19 97 1 Frustration in Lattice Gauge Theory

The importance of frustration and disorder is well known to condensed-matter physicists working in the field of spin-glasses and related systems [1]. In these systems one can find a variety of “unusual” phases which, in some cases, present completely new phenomena (for example, the existence of a multiplicity of vacua not related by a symmetry of the action). It is interesting to ask whether similar phenomena could happen in a field theory and what will be the physical consequences. As a first step in this direction, we address here the issue of frustration in lattice gauge theories. Specifically we will study a model in which frustration is introduced by hand (although inspiration is taken from the hopping-parameter expansion of QED).