Baryon Masses and Hadronic Decay Widths with Explicit Pionic Contributions

Abstract

We report results from studies of baryon ground and resonant states by taking explicit mesonic degrees of freedom into account. We are following a relativistic coupled-channels approach relying on a Poincaré-invariant mass operator in matrix form. Generally, it corresponds to a bare particle that is coupled to a number of further mesonic channels. Here we present results, where the bare particle is either a bare nucleon or a bare Delta coupled to pion–nucleon and pion–Delta channels, respectively. For the pion–baryon vertices we employ coupling constants and form factors from different models in the literature. From the mass-operator eigenvalue equation we obtain the pion-dressing effects on the nucleon mass as well as the mass and pion-decay width of the Delta. The dressed masses become smaller than the bare ones, and a finite width of the Delta is naturally generated. The results are relevant for the construction of constituent-quark models for baryons, which have so far not included explicit mesonic degrees of freedom, but have rather relied on three-quark configurations only.