Recent developments in effective field theory

We will give a short introduction to the one-nucleon sector of chiral perturbation theory and will address the issue of a consistent power counting and renormalization. We will discuss the infrared regularization and the extended on-mass-shell scheme. Both allow for the inclusion of further degrees of freedom beyond pions and nucleons and the application to higher-loop calculations. As applications we consider the chiral expansion of the nucleon mass to order O(q^6) and the inclusion of vector and axial-vector mesons in the calculation of nucleon form factors.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, invited talk given at International School of Nuclear Physics, 29th Course "Quarks in Hadrons and Nuclei", Erice, Sicily, 16 - 24 September 200

A possible experimental determination of ms/m^m_s/{\hat m} from Kμ4K_{\mu 4} decays

$K\pi$ scattering and $K_{\mu 4}$ decays are studied at leading order of improved chiral perturbation theory. It is shown that high precision $K_{\mu 4}$ experiments at, e.g., DA$\Phi$NE should allow for a direct measurement of the quark mass ratio $m_s$/${\hat m}$.Comment: 9 pages, preprint IPNO-TH 93-17, 2 figures not included, available upon request, plain Latex, April 199

On the pion cloud of the nucleon

We evaluate the two--pion contribution to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors by use of dispersion analysis and chiral perturbation theory. After subtraction of the rho--meson component, we calculate the distributions of charge and magnetization in coordinate space, which can be interpreted as the effects of the pion cloud. We find that the charge distribution of this pion cloud effect peaks at distances of about 0.3 fm. Furthermore, we calculate the contribution of the pion cloud to the isovector charges and radii of the nucleon.Comment: 7 pages, latex, 3 ps figures, minor change

Infrared regularization with spin-3/2 fields

We present a Lorentz-invariant formulation of baryon chiral perturbation theory including spin-3/2 fields. Particular attention is paid to the projection on the spin-3/2 components of the delta fields. We also discuss the nucleon mass and the pion-nucleon sigma term.Comment: 9 pp, 1 fi

Structure of the nucleon in chiral perturbation theory

We discuss a renormalization scheme for relativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory which provides a simple and consistent power counting for renormalized diagrams. The method involves finite subtractions of dimensionally regularized diagrams beyond the standard modified minimal subtraction scheme of chiral perturbation theory to remove contributions violating the power counting. This is achieved by a suitable renormalization of the parameters of the most general effective Lagrangian. As applications we discuss the mass of the nucleon, the $\sigma$ term, and the scalar and electromagnetic form factors.Comment: Invited talk given by S. Scherer at the Fourth International Conference on Perspectives in Hadronic Physics, Trieste, Italy, 12 -16 May 2003, 8 pages, 7 figure

Chiral Extrapolations and the Covariant Small Scale Expansion

We calculate the nucleon and the delta mass to fourth order in a covariant formulation of the small scale expansion. We analyze lattice data from the MILC collaboration and demonstrate that the available lattice data combined with our knowledge of the physical values for the nucleon and delta masses lead to consistent chiral extrapolation functions for both observables up to fairly large pion masses. This holds in particular for very recent data on the delta mass from the QCDSF collaboration. The resulting pion-nucleon sigma term is sigma_{piN} = 48.9 MeV. This first quantitative analysis of the quark-mass dependence of the structure of the Delta(1232) in full QCD within chiral effective field theory suggests that (the real part of) the nucleon-delta mass-splitting in the chiral limit, Delta_0 = 0.33 GeV, is slightly larger than at the physical point. Further analysis of simultaneous fits to nucleon and delta lattice data are needed for a precision determination of the properties of the first excited state of the nucleon.Comment: 11 pp, 2 figs, version accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.

Simple-Current Symmetries, Rank-Level Duality, and Linear Skein Relations for Chern-Simons Graphs

A previously proposed two-step algorithm for calculating the expectation values of Chern-Simons graphs fails to determine certain crucial signs. The step which involves calculating tetrahedra by solving certain non- linear equations is repaired by introducing additional linear equations. As a first step towards a new algorithm for general graphs we find useful linear equations for those special graphs which support knots and links. Using the improved set of equations for tetrahedra we examine the symmetries between tetrahedra generated by arbitrary simple currents. Along the way we uncover the classical origin of simple-current charges. The improved skein relations also lead to exact identities between planar tetrahedra in level $K$ $G(N)$ and level $N$ $G(K)$ CS theories, where $G(N)$ denotes a classical group. These results are recast as identities for quantum $6j$-symbols and WZW braid matrices. We obtain the transformation properties of arbitrary graphs and links under simple current symmetries and rank-level duality. For links with knotted components this requires precise control of the braid eigenvalue permutation signs, which we obtain from plethysm and an explicit expression for the (multiplicity free) signs, valid for all compact gauge groups and all fusion products.Comment: 58 pages, BRX-TH-30

Geometry of WZW Orientifolds

We analyze unoriented Wess-Zumino-Witten models from a geometrical point of view. We show that the geometric interpretation of simple current crosscap states is as centre orientifold planes localized on conjugacy classes of the group manifold. We determine the locations and dimensions of these planes for arbitrary simply-connected groups and orbifolds thereof. The dimensions of the O-planes turn out to be given by the dimensions of symmetric coset manifolds based on regular embeddings. Furthermore, we give a geometrical interpretation of boundary conjugation in open unoriented WZW models; it yields D-branes together with their images under the orientifold projection. To find the agreement between O-planes and crosscap states, we find explicit answers for lattice extensions of Gaussian sums. These results allow us to express the modular P-matrix, which is directly related to the crosscap coefficient, in terms of characters of the horizontal subgroup of the affine Lie algebra. A corollary of this relation is that there exists a formal linear relation between the modular P- and the modular S-matrix.Comment: 35 pages LaTeX, 2 tables; Proof added for symmetric space relation; minor improvements; references adde

Chiral perturbation theory - Success and challenge

Chiral perturbation theory is the effective field theory of the strong interactions at low energies. We will give a short introduction to chiral perturbation theory for mesons and will discuss, as an example, the electromagnetic polarizabilities of the pion. These have recently been extracted from an experiment on radiative $\pi^+$ photoproduction from the proton ($\gamma p\to \gamma \pi^+ n$) at the Mainz Microtron MAMI. Next we will turn to the one-baryon sector of chiral perturbation theory and will address the issue of a consistent power counting scheme. As examples of the heavy-baryon framework we will comment on the extraction of the axial radius from pion electroproduction and will discuss the generalized polarizabilities of the proton. Finally, we will discuss two recently proposed manifestly Lorentz-invariant renormalization schemes and illustrate their application in a calculation of the nucleon electromagnetic form factors.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, invited talk given at the Symposium 20 Years of Physics at the Mainz Microtron MAMI, 20 - 22 October 2005, Mainz, German

The nucleon and Delta-resonance masses in relativistic chiral effective-field theory

We study the chiral behavior of the nucleon and $\Delta$-isobar masses within a manifestly covariant chiral effective-field theory, consistent with the analyticity principle. We compute the $\pi N$ and $\pi\Delta$ one-loop contributions to the mass and field-renormalization constant, and find that they can be described in terms of universal relativistic loop functions, multiplied by appropriate spin, isospin and coupling constants. We show that these relativistic one-loop corrections, when properly renormalized, obey the chiral power-counting and vanish in the chiral limit. The results including only the $\pi N$-loop corrections compare favorably with the lattice QCD data for the pion-mass dependence of the nucleon and $\Delta$ masses, while inclusion of the $\pi \Delta$ loops tends to spoil this agreement.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figs, 2 table