The renormalization group and ultraviolet asymptotics

This article describes in detail the method of the renormalization group and outlines the possibilities of using it for the analysis of high-energy asymptotics in the framework of quantum field theory. The renormalization group formalism is constructed for an arbitrary scheme of renormalization. The exposition is based on the concepts of effective charge and effective mass. Principal attention is given to the problem of deriving reliable information about the ultraviolet properties of quantized-field models on the basis of perturbation theory calculations. A summary of the results of such calculations for a wide variety of models is given.