Chiral perturbation theory analysis of the baryon magnetic moments reexamined

Abstract

We reexamine critically the chiral expansion for the baryon magnetic moments including the contributions from loops which involve intermediate octet and decuplet baryons. We find that, contrary to some claims, the nonanalytic loop contributions of orders $m_s^{1/2}$ and $m_s ln m_s$ are of the same general size because of large coupling factors for the latter, and that the decuplet contributions are as large as the octet contributions and must be included in a consistent calculation. There is no clear evidence of the convergence of the chiral series. The adequacy of the theory will not be established until dynamical models are able to calculate the contributions from the counterterms that largely hide the loop effects in fits to the data.