Derivative Expansion of the Exact Renormalization Group

The functional flow equations for the Legendre effective action, with respect to changes in a smooth cutoff, are approximated by a derivative expansion; no other approximation is made. This results in a set of coupled non-linear differential equations. The corresponding differential equations for a fixed point action have at most a countable number of solutions that are well defined for all values of the field. We apply the technique to the fixed points of one-component real scalar field theory in three dimensions. Only two non-singular solutions are found: the gaussian fixed point and an approximation to the Wilson fixed point. The latter is used to compute critical exponents, by carrying the approximation to second order. The results appear to converge rapidly.