Abstract: 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 19low-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 19couplings) 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 n(f) = 2 + 1lattice QCD simulations as long as the strange quark mass is close to its physical value.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: 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-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) B chi PT. 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.

Abstract: The octet-baryon axial-vector charges and the g(1)/f(1) 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, g(1)(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 nonanalytic 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.