On the chiral expansion of vector meson masses

TL;DR

This paper investigates the chiral expansion of meson masses and decay constants within a renormalizable effective field theory framework, highlighting the impact of vector mesons on low-energy QCD with three light flavors.

Contribution

It introduces a renormalizable chiral Lagrangian based on the hadrogenesis conjecture and develops a partial summation scheme for vector meson contributions.

Findings

Loop effects from vector mesons significantly influence chiral structure.

A renormalization scheme sums terms proportional to (M/Λ_χ)^n.

Effects are sizable at physical quark masses.

Abstract

We study the chiral expansion of meson masses and decay constants using a chiral Lagrangian that was constructed previously based on the hadrogenesis conjecture. The one-loop self energies of the Goldstone bosons and vector mesons are evaluated. It is illustrated that a renormalizeable effective field theory arises once specific conditions on the low-energy constants are imposed. For the case where the hadrogenesis mass gap scale Lambda_{HG} is substantially larger than the chiral symmetry breaking scale Lambda_chi a partial summation scheme is required. All terms proportional to (M/\Lambda_\chi)^n can be summed by a suitable renormalization, where M is the chiral and large-N_c limit of the vector meson masses in QCD. The size of loop effects from vector meson degrees of freedom is illustrated for physical quarks masses. Naturally sized effects are observed that have significant impact on the chiral structure of low-energy QCD with three light flavours.