The non-perturbative renormalization group in the ordered phase

We study some analytical properties of the solutions of the non perturbative renormalization group flow equations for a scalar field theory with $Z_2$ symmetry in the ordered phase, i.e. at temperatures below the critical temperature. The study is made in the framework of the local potential approximation. We show that the required physical discontinuity of the magnetic susceptibility $\chi(M)$ at $M=\pm M_0$ ($M_0$ spontaneous magnetization) is reproduced only if the cut-off function which separates high and low energy modes satisfies to some restrictive explicit mathematical conditions; we stress that these conditions are not satisfied by a sharp cut-off in dimensions of space $d<4$.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figures, 7 table

Extrapolation of lattice QCD results beyond the power-counting regime

Resummation of the chiral expansion is necessary to make accurate contact with current lattice simulation results of full QCD. Resummation techniques including relativistic formulations of chiral effective field theory and finite-range regularization (FRR) techniques are reviewed, with an emphasis on using lattice simulation results to constrain the parameters of the chiral expansion. We illustrate how the chiral extrapolation problem has been solved and use FRR techniques to identify the power-counting regime (PCR) of chiral perturbation theory. To fourth-order in the expansion at the 1% tolerance level, we find 0 \le m_pi \le 0.18 GeV for the PCR, extending only a small distance beyond the physical pion mass.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, plenary talk at BARYONS 2004, Paris, Oct. 25-2