Bruno Nachtergaele Bounds on the mass gap of the ferromagnetic XXZ chain (79K, LaTeX, 1 figure appended as uuencoded compressed Postscript file) ABSTRACT. We prove rigorous lower and upper bounds for the mass gap of the ferromagnetic spin 1/2 XXZ chain. The two bounds coincide asymptotically in the Ising limit $\Delta\to\infty$. Near the isotropic point, $\Delta=1$, the estimates are good enough to determine the critical behaviour of the mass gap unambiguously. The derivation does not rely on exact solutions.