The running coupling from the QCD Schrödinger functional: a one-loop analysis

Starting from the Schr\"odinger functional, we give a non-perturbative definition of the running coupling constant in QCD. The spatial boundary conditions for the quark fields are chosen such that the massless Dirac operator in the classical background field has a large smallest eigenvalue. At one-loop order of perturbation theory, we determine the matching coefficient to the \MSbar-scheme and discuss the quark mass effects in the \beta-function. To this order, we also compute the Symanzik improvement coefficient necessary to remove the \Oa lattice artefacts originating from the boundaries. For reasonable lattice resolutions and the standard Wilson action, lattice artefacts are found to be only weakly dependent on the lattice spacing a, while they vanish quickly with the improved action of Sheikholeslami and Wohlert.