  Discrete breathers are time-periodic, spatially localized solutions of the
equations of motion for a system of classical degrees of freedom interacting on
a lattice. We study the existence of energy thresholds for discrete breathers,
i.e., the question whether, in a certain system, discrete breathers of
arbitrarily low energy exist, or a threshold has to be overcome in order to
excite a discrete breather. Breather energies are found to have a positive
lower bound if the lattice dimension d is greater than or equal to a certain
critical value d_c, whereas no energy threshold is observed for d<d_c. The
critical dimension d_c is system dependent and can be computed explicitly,
taking on values between zero and infinity. Three classes of Hamiltonian
systems are distinguished, being characterized by different mechanisms
effecting the existence (or non-existence) of an energy threshold.
