Systematic All-Orders Method to Eliminate Renormalization-Scale and Scheme Ambiguities in Perturbative QCD

We introduce a generalization of the conventional renormalization schemes used in dimensional regularization, which illuminates the renormalization scheme and scale ambiguities of perturbative QCD predictions, exposes the general pattern of nonconformal β (i) terms, and reveals a special degeneracy of the terms in the perturbative coefficients. It allows us to systematically determine the argument of the running coupling order by order in perturbative QCD in a form which can be readily automatized. The new method satisfies all of the principles of the renormalization group and eliminates an unnecessary source of systematic error.