Discussion. Products and derivatives [fdip-00AH]

A coupling that varies from site to site enters a lattice action as a coefficient: the term \(m\sum _v\varphi (v)^2\) for a constant mass \(m\) becomes \(\sum _v m(v)\varphi (v)^2\), so a fixed field multiplies the field at each site. Multiplying by a fixed field and taking differences along the edges are then two linear maps of one module, and composing them in the two orders gives two different maps. What is the map that multiplies, and how badly does it fail to commute with a difference?