The lattice gradient flow at tree level

The cut-off effects of the lattice gradient flow – often called Wilson flow – are calculated on a periodic 4-torus at leading order in the gauge coupling. A large class of discretizations is considered which includes all frequently used cases in practice. It is shown how the results lead to a smoother continuum extrapolation for the beta-function of SU(3) gauge theory with N_f = 4 flavors of fermions.