# Observable currents in lattice field theories

Observable currents are spacetime local objects that induce physical observables when integrated on an auxiliary codimension one surface. Since the resulting observables are independent of local deformations of the integration surface, the currents themselves carry most of the information about the induced physical observables. I study observable currents in a multisymplectic framework for Lagrangian field theory over discrete spacetime. A weak version of observable currents preserves many of their properties, while inducing a family of observables capable of separating points in the space of physically distinct solutions. A Poisson bracket gives the space of observable currents the structure of a Lie algebra. Peierls bracket for bulk observables gives an algebra homomorphism mapping equivalence classes of bulk observables to weak observable currents. The study covers scalar fields, nonlinear sigma models and gauge theories (including gauge theory formulations of general relativity) on the lattice. Even when this paper is entirely classical, this study is relevant for quantum field theory because a quantization of the framework leads to a spin foam model formulation of lattice field theory.

 Comments: 29 pages, 1 figure Subjects: Mathematical Physics (math-ph) MSC classes: 53D42 Cite as: arXiv:1602.02304 [math-ph] (or arXiv:1602.02304v1 [math-ph] for this version)