Improved description of the pion-nucleon scattering phenomenology in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory

Abstract

We highlight some of the recent advances in the application of chiral effective field theory (chiral EFT) with baryons to the $\pi N$ scattering process. We recall some problems that cast doubt on the applicability of chiral EFT to $\pi N$ and show how the relativistic formalism, once the $\Delta(1232)$-resonance is included as an explicit degree of freedom, solves these issues. Finally it is shown how this approach can be used to extract the $\sigma$-terms from phenomenological information.