EXCHANGE DEGENERACY AND SU(3)

It is hypothesized that the imaginary parts of the contributions of exchange-degenerate Regge trajectories cancel in hadron-hadron states of internal quantum numbers for which no resonances exist. A recent work by the author on SU(3)-symmetric baryon trajectories in meson-baryon states is generalized to include all trajectories and all meson-meson, meson-baryon, and baryon-baryon states. Consistency is possible for these states. The difficulty concerning baryon-antibaryon states is discussed. The large, observed ππN decay of the jP=32-Δ*(1670) is predicted from the consistency conditions. The magnitude of the coupling to baryons of any singlet meson is predicted in terms of the octet interactions. This result includes the prediction that NN vertices of all spin dependences vanish. The modification imposed by the baryon exchange-degeneracy hypothesis on the Regge analysis of meson-baryon scattering is discussed. The relation of the results to the bootstrap hypothesis is discussed. © 1969 The American Physical Society.