On the basis of a chiral symmetry transformation, we predict an isovector component for the family of light scalar mesons, i.e. partners of the σ-meson. Such a contribution may be necessary to tune the equation of state of nuclear matter in order to comply with severe constraints from a recent analysis of observational macroscopic properties of neutron stars.

We investigate the influence of retardation effects on covariant 3-dimensional wave functions for bound hadrons. Within a quark-(scalar) diquark representation of a baryon, the four-dimensional Bethe–Salpeter equation is solved for a 1-rank separable kernel which simulates Coulombic attraction and confinement. We project the manifestly covariant bound state wave function into three dimensions upon integrating out the non-static energy dependence and compare it with solutions of three-dimensional quasi-potential equations obtained from different kinematical projections on the relative energy variable. We find that for long-range interactions, as characteristic in QCD, retardation effects in bound states are of crucial importance.

We investigate the exclusive proton-induced $K^+$ production near the kaon threshold. Compared are two models: a meson-exchange model, which includes $\pi$, \rho$, $K$ and $K^\ast$ exchange, together with the dominant baryon resonances, and a quark-gluon model, where momentum sharing is provided via the exchange of two gluons. Based on covariant bound state wave functions for the meson and the baryons - which we treat as quark-diquark objects - first results for the $pp\to p\Lambda K^+$ total cross section are presented for both models.