Baryons in/and Lattice QCD

Abstract

Anchoring our understanding of low-energy nuclear and hadronic physics to the fundamental theory of strong interactions, QCD, remains and outstanding challenge for physicists. Lattice QCD and chiral perturbation theory are the most powerful theoretical tools we have at our disposal to make this connection. These tools share a symbiotic relationship as chiral perturbation theory is used to understand the light quark mass dependence of observables, while lattice QCD is used to determine the values of the unknown operator coefficients appearing in the chiral Lagrangian. In this talk, I review our present understanding of select single baryon properties from lattice QCD and chiral perturbation theory, highlighting some of the challenges and discussing some unresolved puzzles.