Baryon chiral perturbation theory in manifestly Lorentz invariant form

Abstract.

We show that in the presence of massive particles, such as nucleons, the standard low-energy expansion, in powers of meson momenta and light-quark masses, in general converges in only part of the low-energy region. The expansion of the scalar form factor $\sigma(t)$, for instance, breaks down in the vicinity of $t=4M_\pi^2$. In the language of heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory, the proper behaviour in the threshold region results only if the multiple internal-line insertions generated by relativistic kinematics are summed up to all orders. We propose a method that yields a coherent representation throughout the low-energy region, while keeping Lorentz and chiral invariance explicit at all stages. The method is illustrated with a calculation of the nucleon mass and of the scalar form factor to order $p^4$.