Towards a coupled-cluster treatment of SU(N) lattice gauge field theory

A consistent approach to Hamiltonian SU(N) lattice gauge field theory is developed using the maximal-tree gauge and an appropriately chosen set of angular variables. The various constraints are carefully discussed, as is a practical means for their implementation. A complete set of variables for the colourless sector is thereby determined. We show that the one-plaquette problem in SU(N) gauge theory can be mapped onto a problem of N fermions on a torus, which is solved numerically for the low-lying energy spectra for N ≤ 5. We end with a brief discussion of how to extend the approach to include the spatial (inter-plaquette) correlations of the full theory, by using a coupled-cluster method parametrisation of the full wave functional.