Spontaneous symmetry breaking in fermion-gauge systems: a non standard approach

We propose a new method for the study of the chiral properties of the ground state in QFTs based on the computation of the probability distribution function of the chiral condensate. It can be applied directly in the chiral limit and therefore no mass extrapolations are needed. Furthermore this approach allows to write up equations relating the chiral condensate with quantities computable by standard numerical methods, the functional form of these relations depending on the broken symmetry group. As a check, we report some results for the compact Schwinger model.