We calculate the neutral pion photoproduction on the proton near threshold in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory, including the ∆(1232) resonance as an explicit degree of freedom, up to chiral order p in the δ counting. We compare our results with recent low-energy data from the Mainz Microtron for angular distributions and photon asymmetries. The convergence of the chiral series of the covariant approach is found to improve substantially with the inclusion of the ∆(1232) resonance.

Treating the strange quark mass as a heavy scale compared to the light quark mass, we perform a matching of the nucleon mass in the SU(3) sector to the two-flavor case in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory. The validity of the 19 low-energy constants appearing in the octet baryon masses up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order [1] is supported by comparing the effective parameters (the combinations of the 19 couplings) with the corresponding low-energy constants in the SU(2) sector [2]. In addition, it is shown that the dependence of the effective parameters and the pion-nucleon sigma term on the strange quark mass is relatively weak around its physical value, thus providing support to the assumption made in Ref. [2] that the SU(2) baryon chiral perturbation theory can be applied to study nf=2+1 lattice QCD simulations as long as the strange quark mass is close to its physical value.

We calculate the neutral pion photoproduction on the proton near threshold in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory, including the Delta(1232) resonance as an explicit degree of freedom, up to chiral order p(7/2) in the delta counting. We compare our results with recent low-energy data from the Mainz Microtron for angular distributions and photon asymmetries. The convergence of the chiral series of the covariant approach is found to improve substantially with the inclusion of the Delta(1232) resonance.

The neutral pion photoproduction on the proton near threshold has a very small scattering cross section when compared to the charged channels, which in ChPT is explained by strong cancellations between the lowest order pieces. Therefore it is very sensitive to higher-order corrections of chiral perturbation theory. We perform a fully covariant calculation up to chiral order p(3) and we investigate the effect of the inclusion of the Delta(1232) resonance as an explicit degree of freedom. We show that the convergence improves, leading to a much better agreement with data at a wide range of energies.

We predict the values for baryon forward spin polarizabilities in fully covariant ChPT and including the virtual contributions of the spin-3/2 states.As the nucleon results are in good agreement with the experimental data and they do not depend on renormalization schemes, we extend the calculations to the hyperon sector.

We present the calculation of the hyperon forward spin polarizability gamma(0) using manifestly Lorentz-covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory including the intermediate contribution of the spin-3/2 states. As at the considered order the extraction of. 0 is a pure prediction of chiral perturbation theory, the obtained values are a good test for this theory. After including explicitly the decuplet states, our SU(2) results have a very good agreement with the experimental data and we extend our framework to SU(3) to give predictions for the hyperons'. 0 values. Prominent are the Sigma(-) and Xi(-) baryons as their photon transition to the decuplet is forbidden in SU(3) symmetry and therefore they are not sensitive to the explicit inclusion of the decuplet in the theory.

We study the neutral pion photoproduction at near-threshold energies in fully covariant chiral perturbation theory up to O(p^3). When including only nucleonic virtual states in the model, the convergence is too slow. Therefore we test the model when introducing the Delta(1232) resonance as an additional degree of freedom. Some low-energy constants were fitted, converging to values in good agreement with those expected from literature.

We predict the values for baryon forward spin polarizabilities in fully covariant ChPT and including the virtual contributions of the spin-3/2 states. As the nucleon results are in good agreement with the experimental data and they do not depend on renormalization schemes, we extend the calculations to the hyperon sector.

We investigate the neutral pion photoproduction on the proton near threshold in covariant chiral perturbation theory with the explicit inclusion of Δ degrees of freedom. This channel is specially sensitive to chiral dynamics and the advent of very precise data from the Mainz microtron has shown the limits of the convergence of the chiral series for both the heavy baryon and the covariant approaches. We show that the inclusion of the Δ resonance substantially improves the convergence leading to a good agreement with data for a wider range of energies.

The analysis of hadronic interactions with effective field theory techniques is complicated by the appearance of a large number of low-energy constants, which are usually fitted to data. On the other hand, the large-N-c limit helps to impose natural short-distance constraints on these low-energy constants, providing a parameter reduction. A Bayesian interpretation of the expected 1/N-c accuracy allows for an easy and efficient implementation of these constraints, using an augmented chi(2). We apply this approach to the analysis of meson-meson scattering, in conjunction with chiral perturbation theory to one loop and coupled-channel unitarity, and show that it helps to largely reduce the many existing ambiguities and simultaneously provide an acceptable description of the available phase shifts.

The octet-baryon axial-vector charges and the g1/f1 ratios measured in the semileptonic hyperon decays are studied up to O(p^3) using the covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory with explicit decuplet contributions. We clarify the role of different low-energy constants and find a good convergence for the chiral expansion of the axial-vector charges of the baryon octet, g1(0), with O(p^3) corrections typically around 20% of the leading ones. This is a consequence of strong cancellations between different next-to-leading order terms. We show that considering only non-analytic terms is not enough and that analytic terms appearing at the same chiral order play an important role in this description. The same effects still hold for the chiral extrapolation of the axial-vector charges and result in a rather mild quark-mass dependence. As a result, we report a determination of the leading order chiral couplings, D=0.623(61)(17) and F=0.441(47)(2), as obtained from a completely consistent chiral analysis up to O(p^3). Furthermore, we note that the appearance of an unknown low-energy constant precludes the extraction of the proton octet-charge from semileptonic decay data alone, which is relevant for an analysis of the composition of the proton spin.

Fits of the p^4 covariant SU(2) baryon chiral perturbation theory to lattice QCD nucleon mass data from several collaborations for 2 and 2+1 flavors are presented. We consider contributions from explicit Delta(1232) degrees of freedom, finite volume and finite spacing corrections. We emphasize here our Nf=2+1 study. We obtain low-energy constants of natural size that are compatible with the rather linear pion-mass dependence of the nucleon mass observed in lattice QCD. We report a value for the pion-nucleon sigma term of 41(5)(4) MeV for the 2 flavor case and 52(3)(8) MeV for 2+1 flavors.

We briefly review recent investigations on the transverse spin structure of the nucleon, based on the chiral quark-soliton model. We discuss the results of the tensor and anomalous tensor magnetic form factors and the corresponding transverse quark spin densities inside a nucleon. The results are compared with those of the recent lattice calculation. While their qualitative features are similar to the lattice ones, there are some discrepancies in the momentum dependence of the form factors and accordingly in the strengths of the transverse spin densities.

By looking at the complex plane of the pion-mass squared we establish a dispersion relation which the static quantities, such as baryon masses, magnetic moments, polarizabilities, should obey. This dispersion relation yields insight into the differences between the heavy-baryon and relativistic calculations in the baryon sector of chiral perturbation theory.

We investigate the self-energies of particles in an external magnetic field B. The dependence is generally of the type root P(B) with P a polynomial in B and the participating masses. The nonanalytic point depends on the masses and charges of the involved particles and is unproblematic for stable particles but constrains the linear energy shift approximation for resonances. We recover an earlier reported condition when the self-energy can be expanded in B and derive two more conditions. Furthermore, we obtain the B dependent self-energies of the nucleon and Delta(1232)-isobar in the SU(2) covariant chiral perturbation theory.

An expansion of the electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon and Delta(1232) in small momentum transfer and pion mass is performed in a manifestly-covariant EFT framework consistent with chiral symmetry and analyticity. We present the expressions for the nucleon and Delta(1232) electromagnetic form factors, charge radii, and electromagnetic moments in the framework of SU(2) baryon chiral perturbation theory, with nucleon and Delta(1232)-isobar degrees of freedom, to next-to-leading order. Motivated by the results for the proton electric radius obtained from the muonic-hydrogen atom and electron-scattering process, we extract values for the second derivative of the electric form factor which is a genuine prediction of the p^3 BChPT. The chiral behavior of radii and moments is studied and compared to that obtained in the heavy-baryon framework and lattice QCD. The chiral behavior of Delta(1232)-isobar properties exhibits cusps and singularities at the threshold of Delta->pi N decay, and their physical significance is discussed.

We investigate the transverse quark spin densities of the nucleon with the lowest moment within the framework of the SU(3) chiral quark-soliton model, emphasizing the strange quark spin density. Based on previous results of the vector and tensor form factors, we are able to determine the impact-parameter dependent probability densities of transversely polarized quarks in an unpolarized nucleon as well as those of unpolarized quarks in a transversely polarized nucleon. We find that the present numerical results for the transverse spin densities of the up and down quarks are in good agreement with those of the lattice calculation. We predict the transvere spin densities of the strange quark. It turns out that the polarized strange quark is noticeably distorted in an unpolarized proton.

We present recent studies on the transverse spin densities of the pion and nucleon within the framework of the chiral quark-(soliton) model, based on the calculation of the electromagnetic and tensor form factors of the pion and the nucleon. The results for the transverse spin densities of the quark inside a pion are in good agreement with the recent lattice data, while those of the nucleon show similar features to the lattice results. We also present the first results of the transverse spin densities of the strange quark inside a nucleon.

We discuss the chiral behavior of the nucleon and Delta(1232) electromagnetic properties within the framework of a SU(2) covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory. Our one-loop calculation is complete to the order p(3) and p(4)/Delta with Delta as the Delta(1232)-nucleon energy gap. We show that the magnetic moment of a resonance can be defined by the linear energy shift only when an additional relation between the involved masses and the applied magnetic field strength is fulfilled. Singularities and cusps in the pion mass dependence of the Delta(1232) electromagnetic moments reflect a non-fulfillment. We show results for the pion mass dependence of the nucleon iso-vector electromagnetic quantities and present preliminary results for finite volume effects on the iso-vector anomalous magnetic moment.