Symanzik effective actions in the large N limit

Abstract: Symanzik effective actions, conjectured to describe lattice artifacts, are determined for a class of lattice regularizations of the non-linear O(N) sigma model in two dimensions in the leading order of the 1/N-expansion. The class of actions considered includes also ones which do not have the usual classical limit and are not (so far) treatable in the framework of ordinary perturbation theory. The effective actions obtained are shown to reproduce previously computed lattice artifacts of the step scaling functions defined in finite volume, giving further confidence in Symanzik's theory of lattice artifacts.