Quarks Bound by Chiral Fields: The Quark Structure of the Vacuum and of Light Mesons and Baryons

The structure of light hadrons is dominated by the spontaneously broken chiral symmetry of the strongly interacting (QCD) vacuum. Low energy properties of light hadrons can be described in terms of quarks interacting with chiral fields. This book gives a comprehensive account of a large class of models which describe the restoration of chiral symmetry at high temperature and density, the effective interactions between quarks, mesons as solutions of the Beth-Salpeter equation, and baryons in terms of solitions which rotate in flavor space. An in-depth analysis of regularization is given, including regularization by delocalized fields. Symmetry conserving approximations are formulated using both path integral and Feynmann graph methods. The book's style is pedagogical and well-suited to graduate and Ph.D. students who want to learn the techniques used in present day research. It can also serve as a reference for research and lecture courses.

Georges Ripka is at Centre d'Etudes de Saclay.