Reconciling threshold and subthreshold expansions for pion-nucleon scattering

TL;DR

This paper investigates how including the $elta(1232)$ resonance and using covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory improve the consistency of pion-nucleon scattering descriptions across different kinematic regions, addressing limitations of heavy-baryon approaches.

Contribution

It demonstrates that explicit inclusion of the $elta$ and covariant formulations enhance the convergence and consistency of chiral perturbation theory in pion-nucleon scattering.

Findings

Including the $elta$ reduces low-energy constants to natural values.

Covariant scheme with resummed $1/m_N$ corrections improves results.

The approach mitigates tension between threshold and subthreshold kinematics.

Abstract

Heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) at one loop fails in relating the pion-nucleon amplitude in the physical region and for subthreshold kinematics due to loop effects enhanced by large low-energy constants. Studying the chiral convergence of threshold and subthreshold parameters up to fourth order in the small-scale expansion, we address the question to what extent this tension can be mitigated by including the $\Delta(1232)$ as an explicit degree of freedom and/or using a covariant formulation of baryon ChPT. We find that the inclusion of the $\Delta$ indeed reduces the low-energy constants to more natural values and thereby improves consistency between threshold and subthreshold kinematics. In addition, even in the $\Delta$-less theory the resummation of $1/m_N$ corrections in the covariant scheme improves the results markedly over the heavy-baryon formulation, in line with previous observations in the single-baryon sector of ChPT that so far have evaded a profound theoretical explanation.