The existence and exponential clustering of correlation functions for a classical coulomb system at low density or high temperature are proven using methods from constructive quantum field theory, the sine gordon transformation and the Glimm, Jaffe, Spencer expansion about mean field theory. This is a vindication of a belief of long standing among physicists, known as Debye screening. That is, because of special properties of the coulomb potential, the configurations of significant probability are those in which the long range parts of r-1 are mostly cancelled, leaving an effective exponentially decaying potential acting between charge clouds. This paper generalizes a previous paper of one of the authors in which these results were obtained for a special lattice system. The present treatment covers the continuous mechanics situation, with essentially arbitrary short range forces and charge species. Charge symmetry is not assumed.

New expressions are given for the expansion coefficients in the Mayer expansion (and thus the virial expansion). These promise to be useful in applications, as well as provide a simple rigorous proof of the convergence of the Mayer series and some of its properties.

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We adapt the cluster expansion first used to treat infrared problems for lattice models (a mass zero cluster expansion) to the usual field theory situation. The field is expanded in terms of special block spin functions and the cluster expansion given in terms of the expansion coefficients (phase cell variables); the cluster expansion expresses correlation functions in terms of contributions from finite coupled subsets of these variables. Most of the present work is carried through in d space time dimensions (for 4; the details of the cluster expansion are pursued and convergence is proven). Thus most of the results in the present work will apply to a treatment of 4: to which we hope to return in a succeeding paper. Of particular interest in this paper is a substitute for the stability of the vacuum bound appropriate to this cluster expansion (for d = 2 and d = 3), and a new method for performing estimates with tree graphs. The phase cell cluster expansions have the renormalization group incorporated intimately into their structure. We hope they will be useful ultimately in treating four dimensional field theories.