  Recent perturbative studies show that in 4d non-commutative spaces, the
trivial (classically stable) vacuum of gauge theories becomes unstable at the
quantum level, unless one introduces sufficiently many fermionic degrees of
freedom. This is due to a negative IR-singular term in the one-loop effective
potential, which appears as a result of the UV/IR mixing. We study such a
system non-perturbatively in the case of pure U(1) gauge theory in four
dimensions, where two directions are non-commutative. Monte Carlo simulations
are performed after mapping the regularized theory onto a U(N) lattice gauge
theory in d=2. At intermediate coupling strength, we find a phase in which open
Wilson lines acquire non-zero vacuum expectation values, which implies the
spontaneous breakdown of translational invariance. In this phase, various
physical quantities obey clear scaling behaviors in the continuum limit with a
fixed non-commutativity parameter $\theta$, which provides evidence for a
possible continuum theory. The extent of the dynamically generated space in the
non-commutative directions becomes finite in the above limit, and its
dependence on $\theta$ is evaluated explicitly. We also study the dispersion
relation. In the weak coupling symmetric phase, it involves a negative
IR-singular term, which is responsible for the observed phase transition. In
the broken phase, it reveals the existence of the Nambu-Goldstone mode
associated with the spontaneous symmetry breaking.
