Based on the study of the simple Abelian Higgs model in 1+1 dimensions we
will present a new method to identify and localize extended instantons. The
idea is to measure the topological charge on regions somewhat larger than the
extended instantons so as to average out the ultraviolet fluctuations but
without losing the detailed topological information when going to the full
space. The instanton size and probability density can be directly extracted
from this analysis. Local dislocations, which can be avoided for fine enough
lattices, can be reinterpreted as modified boundary conditions producing
sectors with net topological charge.Comment: 15 pp., uuencoded compressed tar file of full pape
