Symanzik's improved actions from the viewpoint of the renormalization group

We investigate Symanzik's improvement program in a four-dimensional Euclidean scalar field theory with smooth momentum space cutoff. We use Wilson's renormalization group transformation to define the improved actions as a sequence of initial data for the effective action at the fundamental cutoff. This leads to a sequence of solutions to the renormalization group equation. We define the parameters of the improved actions implicitly by conditions on the effective action at a renormalization scale. The improved actions are close approximations to the continuum effective action. We prove their existence to every order of improvement and to every order of renormalized perturbation theory.Supported in part by a German National Scholarship Foundation fellowship, and by the National Science Foundation under Grant DMS/PHY 86-45122