Radiative and nonleptonic hyperon decays in broken SU(3)

Abstract

We report on the recently proposed joint resolution of two long-standing puzzles in weak radiative (WR) and nonleptonic (NL) hyperon decays (HD). First, a good VMD-based description of WRHD is presented. In particular, the large negative asymmetry observed in the \Sigma^+ \to p \gamma decay is explained through a calculably large SU(3)-breaking effect in the relevant parity-violating amplitude. Second, the achieved description of the parity-violating WRHD amplitudes permits the extraction, via the SU(2)_W + VMD route, of the non-soft-pion correction term in the parity-violating NLHD amplitudes. The latter subtracts a substantial amount from the current-algebra commutator term, thus leading to the resolution of the old S:P discrepancy in NLHD.