The renormalization group and the effective action

The renormalization group is used to sum the leading-log (LL) contributions to the effective action for a large constant external gauge field in terms of the one-loop renormalization group (RG) function β, the next-to-leading-log (NLL) contributions in terms of the two-loop RG function, etc. The log-independent pieces are not determined by the RG equation, but can be fixed by considering the anomaly in the trace of the energy-momentum tensor. Similar considerations can be applied to the effective potential V for a scalar field φ; here the log-independent pieces are fixed by the condition V'(ϕ =v)=0. (author)