Chiral symmetry breaking in strongly coupled 1+1 dimensional lattice gauge theories

We analyse - within the hamiltonian formalism with staggered fermions - the patterns of chiral symmetry breaking for the strongly coupled Schwinger and U(N-c)-color 't Hooft models with one and two flavor of fermions. Using the correspondence between these strongly coupled gauge models and antiferromagnetic spin chains, we provide a rather intuitive picture of their ground states, elucidate their patterns of chiral symmetry breaking, and compute the pertinent chiral condensates. Our analysis evidences an intriguing relationship between the values of the lattice chiral condensates of the 't Hooft and Schwinger models with one flavor of fermions.