Spin-3/2 fields in the heavy-baryon effective theory

Abstract

In the framework of the path integral approach we develop the velocity component formalism for spin-1/2 and -3/2 baryons coupled with pseudoscalar mesons in the limit of heavy baryons. Starting from the most general chiral meson-baryon lagrangian including the invariance of spin-3/2 fields under point transformation we detail various problems in integrating out the heavy velocity components in the baryon fields and derive the effective lagrangian for the light components up to O(1/M_{baryon}).