Pion loops in quenched Quantum Chromodynamics

Abstract

We calculate the divergences of the generating functional of quenched Chiral Perturbation Theory to one loop for a generic number of flavours. The flavour number dependence of our result enlightens the mechanism of quark loop cancellation in the quenched effective theory for any Green function or S matrix element. We also apply our results to $ππ$ scattering and evaluate the coefficient of the chiral log in the S-wave scattering lengths for the quenched case.