91 20 38 v 1 2 1 D ec 1 99 9 The Strongly Coupled ’ t Hooft Model on the Lattice

We study the strong coupling limit of the one-flavor and two-flavor massless 't Hooft models, large − N c-color QCD 2 , on a lattice. We use staggered fermions and the Hamiltonian approach to lattice gauge theories. We show that the one-flavor model is effectively described by the antiferro-magnetic Ising model, whose ground state is the vacuum of the gauge model in the infinite coupling limit; expanding around this ground state we derive a strong coupling expansion and compute the lowest lying hadron masses as well as the chiral condensate of the gauge theory. Our lattice computation well reproduces the results of the continuum theory. Baryons are massless in the infinite coupling limit; they acquire a mass already at the second order in the strong coupling expansion in agreement with the Witten argument that baryons are the QCD solitons. The spectrum and chiral condensate of the two-flavor model are effectively described in terms of observables of the quantum antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. We explicitly write the lowest lying hadron masses and chiral condensate in terms of spin-spin correlators on the ground state of the spin model. We show that the planar limit (N c −→ ∞) of the gauge model corresponds to the large spin limit (S −→ ∞) of the antiferromagnet and compute the hadron mass spectrum in this limit finding that, also in this model, the pattern of chiral symmetry breaking of the continuum theory is well reproduced on the lattice.