Divergence cancellations to full two-loop order in the effective potential of a gauge theory spontaneously broken in the tree-approximation

We demonstrate the explicit cancellation to full two-loop order of all non-counterterm-absorbable divergences within the effective potential of an abelian gauge theory spontaneously broken in the tree-approximation. The inclusion of surface terms, associated with shifts in the variable of integration within more-than-logarithmically divergent integrals, is shown to lead to additional divergences which are shown to be removable by a shift in an (arbitrary) renormalizationmass parameter. (orig.)