CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF BARYON MASSES AND SIGMA-TERMS IN HEAVY BARYON CHIRAL PERTURBATION-THEORY

We present an analysis of the octet baryon masses and the piN and KN sigma-terms in the framework of heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. At next-to-leading order, O(q3), knowledge of the baryon masses and sigma(piN)(0) allows to determine the three corresponding finite low-energy constants and to predict the two KN sigma-terms sigma(KN)(1,2)(0). We also include the spin-3/2 decuplet in the effective theory. The presence of the non-vanishing energy scale due to the octet-decuplet splitting shifts the average octet baryon mass by an infinite amount and leads to infinite renormalizations of the low-energy constants. The first observable effect of the decuplet intermediate states to the baryon masses starts out at order q4. We argue that it is not sufficient to retain only these but no other higher order terms to achieve a consistent description of the three-flavor scalar sector of baryon CHPT. In addition, we critically discuss an SU(2) result which allows to explain the large shift sigma(piN)(2M(pi)2)-sigma(piN)(0) via intermediate DELTA(1232) states.