Cross-channel constraints on resonant antikaon-nucleon scattering

Abstract

Chiral perturbation theory and its unitarized versions have played an important role in our understanding of the low-energy strong interaction. Yet, so far, such studies typically deal exclusively with perturbative or nonperturbative channels. In this letter, we report on the first global study of meson-baryon scattering up to one-loop order. It is shown that covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory, including its unitarization for the negative strangeness sector, can describe meson-baryon scattering data remarkably well. This provides a highly non-trivial check on the validity of this important low-energy effective field theory of QCD. We show that the $\bar{K}N$ related quantities can be better described in comparison with those of lower-order studies, and with reduced uncertainties due to the stringent constraints from the $\ddot{I}€N$ and $KN$ phase shifts. In particular, we find that the two-pole structure of $\hat{I}›(1405)$ persists up to one-loop order reinforcing the existence of two-pole structures in dynamically generated states.

11 pages, 3 figures; to appear in Physical Review Letters