Effects of Symmetry Breaking on the Strong and Electroweak Interactions of the Vector Nonet

Abstract

Starting from a chiral invariant and quark line rule conserving Lagrangian of pseudoscalar and vector nonets we introduce first and second order symmetry breaking as well as quark line rule violating terms and fit the parameters, at tree level, to many strong and electroweak processes. A number of predictions are made. The electroweak interactions are included in a manifestly gauge invariant manner. The resulting symmetry breaking pattern is discussed in detail. Specifically, for the ``strong'' interactions, we study all the vector meson masses and V -> \phi \phi decays, including isotopic spin violations. In the electroweak sector we study the { rho^0 , omega , phi } -> e^+e^- decays, { pi^+ , K^+ , K^0 } ``charge radii'', K_{l3} ``slope factor'' and the overall e^+e^- -> pi^+ pi^- process. It is hoped that the resulting model may be useful as a reasonable description of low energy physics in the range up to about 1 GeV.