Exact chiral symmetry on the lattice and the Ginsparg-Wilson relation

It is shown that the Ginsparg-Wilson relation implies an exact symmetry of the fermion action, which may be regarded as a lattice form of an infinitesimal chiral rotation. Using this result it is straightforward to construct lattice Yukawa models with unbroken flavour and chiral symmetries and no doubling of the fermion spectrum. A contradiction with the Nielsen-Ninomiya theorem is avoided, because the chiral symmetry is realized in a different way than has been assumed when proving the theorem. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.