A general method for non-perturbative renormalization of lattice operators

We propose a non-perturbative method for computing the renormalization constants of generic composite operators. This method is intended to reduce some systematic errors, which are present when one tries to obtain physical predictions from the matrix elements of lattice operators. We also present the results of a calculation of the renormalization constants of several two-fermion operators, obtained, with our method, by numerical simulation of QCD, on a 16^3 \times 32 lattice, at \beta=6.0. The results of this simulation are encouraging, and further applications to four-fermion operators and to the heavy quark effective theory are proposed.