Background dependent cutoff for Wilson actions

We study the application of the background field method in the framework of the exact renormalization group (ERG). By considering the case of a scalar field theory, we provide a detailed discussion of the properties satisfied by a background dependent Wilson action. We show how the Ward identity associated with background field shifts for the Wilson action is related to that for the 1PI Wilson action, or effective average action. Moreover, we discuss the ERG equations in the dimensionless framework and emphasize the role of the Ward identity in this setting. We give two examples: the Gaussian fixed point for the real scalar theory and the large <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mi>N</a:mi></a:math> limit of the linear sigma model.