Color-dielectric gauge theory on a transverse lattice

We investigate in some detail consequences of the effective color-dielectric formulation of lattice gauge theory using the light-cone Hamiltonian formalism with a transverse lattice. As a quantitative test of this approach, we have performed extensive analytic and numerical calculations for (2 + 1)-dimensional pure gauge theory in the large-N limit. Because of Eguchi-Kawai reduction, one effectively studies a (1 + 1)-dimensional gauge theory coupled to matter in the adjoint representation. We study the structure of coupling constant space for our effective potential by comparing with results available from conventional Euclidean lattice Monte Carlo simulations of this system. In particular, we calculate and measure the scaling behavior of the entire low-lying glueball spectrum. glueball wave functions, string tension, asymptotic density of states, and deconfining temperature. We employ a hybrid of discretized light-cone quantization and a wave-function basis in our calculations of the Light-cone Hamiltonian matrix elements, along with extrapolation in Tamm-Dancoff truncation, significantly reducing numerical errors. Finally we discuss, in light of our results, what further measurements and calculations could be made in order to systematically remove lattice spacing dependence from our effective potential a priori. [S0556-2821(97)00424-4].