Weak hyperon decays in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory: Renormalization and applications

The complete renormalization of the weak Lagrangian to chiral order q^2 in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory is performed using heat kernel techniques. The results are compared with divergences appearing in the calculation of Feynman graphs for the nonleptonic hyperon decay Lambda -> p pi^- and an estimate for the size of the counterterm contributions to the s-wave amplitudes in nonleptonic hyperon decays is given.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure

A perturbative treatment for the energy levels of neutral atoms

Energy levels of neutral atoms have been re-examined by applying an alternative perturbative scheme in solving the Schrodinger equation for the Yukawa potential model with a modified screening parameter. The predicted shell binding energies are found to be quite accurate over the entire range of the atomic number $Z$ up to 84 and compare very well with those obtained within the framework of hyper-virial-Pade scheme and the method of shifted large-N expansion. It is observed that the new perturbative method may also be applied to the other areas of atomic physics.Comment: 18 page

A sum rule approach to the violation of Dashen's theorem

A classic sum rule by Das et al. is extended to seven of the low-energy constants $K_i$, introduced by Urech, which parameterize electromagnetic corrections at chiral order $O(e^2p^2)$. Using the spurion formalism, a simple convolution representation is shown to hold and the structure in terms of the chiral renormalization scale, the QCD renormalization scale and the QED gauge parameter is displayed. The role of the resonances is studied as providing rational interpolants to relevant QCD n-point functions in the euclidian domain. A variety of asymptotic constraints must be implemented which have phenomenological consequences. A current assumption concerning the dominance of the lowest-lying resonances is shown clearly to fail in some cases.Comment: A few corrections and improvements made, the list of references is more complet

Low Energy Constants from High Energy Theorems

New constraints on resonance saturation in chiral perturbation theory are investigated. These constraints arise because each consistent saturation scheme must map to a representation of the full QCD chiral symmetry group. The low-energy constants of chiral perturbation theory are then related by a set of mixing angles. It is shown that vector meson dominance is a consequence of the fact that nature has chosen the lowest-dimensional nontrivial chiral representation. It is further shown that chiral symmetry places an upper bound on the mass of the lightest scalar in the hadron spectrum.Comment: 11 pages TeX and mtexsis.te

Baryon axial currents

The baryon axial currents are calculated at one-loop order in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory by employing both a cutoff and dimensional regularization. Data from the semileptonic baryon decays is used to perform a least-squares fit to the two axial couplings D and F of the effective Lagrangian. Predictions for the momentum dependent axial form factors are made and the two different regularization schemes are compared. We also include the spin-3/2 decuplet in the effective theory.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure

Isospin breaking in the vector current of the nucleon

Extraction of the nucleon's strange form factors from experimental data requires a quantitative understanding of the unavoidable contamination from isospin violation. A number of authors have addressed this issue during the past decade, and their work is reviewed here. The predictions from early models are largely consistent with recent results that rely as much as possible on input from QCD symmetries and related experimental data. The resulting bounds on isospin violation are sufficiently precise to be of value to on-going experimental and theoretical studies of the nucleon's strange form factors.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Presented at the International Workshop "From Parity Violation to Hadronic Structure and more...", Milos, Greece, 16-20 May 2006. Version 2 is only to update Refs. [21] and [25

One loop corrections to quantum hadrodynamics with vector mesons

The renormalized elastic $\pi\pi$ scattering amplitude to one loop is calculated in the chiral limit in the $\sigma$ model and in a Quantum Hadrodynamic model (QHD-III) with vector mesons. It is argued that QHD-III reduces to the linear $\sigma$ model in the limit that the vector meson masses become large. The pion decay constant is also calculated to 1-loop in the $\sigma$ model, and at tree level in QHD-III; it is shown that the coefficient of the tree level term in the scattering amplitude equals $F_\pi^{-2}$. The 1-loop correction of $F_\pi$ in QHD-III violates strong isospin current conservation. Thus,it is concluded that QHD-III can, at best, only describe the strongly interacting nuclear sector.Comment: 6 page

Tensor meson exchange at low energies

We complete the analysis of meson resonance contributions to chiral low-energy constants of O(p^4) by including all quark-antiquark bound states with orbital angular momentum less or equal to one. Different tensor meson Lagrangians used in previous work are shown to produce the same final results for the low-energy constants once QCD short-distance constraints are properly implemented. We also discuss the possible relevance of axial-vector mesons with odd C-parity.Comment: 20 pages, comparison with previous work updated, typos removed, results unchanged, version to appear in EPJ

Episodic Recollection Difficulties in ASD Result from Atypical Relational Encoding: Behavioral and Neural Evidence

Memory functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in the encoding of relational but not item information and difficulties in the recollection of contextually rich episodic memories but not in the retrieval of relatively context-free memories through processes of familiarity. The neural underpinnings of this profile and the extent to which encoding difficulties contribute to retrieval difficulties in ASD remain unclear. Using a paradigm developed by Addis and McAndrews [2006; Neuroimage, 33, 1194-1206] we asked adults with and without a diagnosis of ASD to study word-triplets during functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanning that varied in the number of category relations amongst component words. Performance at test confirmed attenuated recollection in the context of preserved familiarity based retrieval in ASD. The results also showed that recollection but not familiarity based retrieval increases as a function of category relations in word triads for both groups, indicating a close link between the encoding of relational information and recollection. This link was further supported by the imaging results, where blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal responses in overlapping regions of the inferior prefrontal cortex were sensitive to the relational encoding manipulation as well as the contrast between recollection versus familiarity based retrieval. Interestingly, however, there was no evidence of prefrontal signal differentiation for this latter contrast in the ASD group for whom signal changes in a left hippocampal region were also marginally attenuated. Together, these observations suggest that attenuated levels of episodic recollection in ASD are, at least in part, attributable to anomalies in relational encoding processes