Baryons, their interactions and the chiral symmetry of QCD

Abstract

An implication of the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in QCD is that at low energy and resolution there appear quasiparticles - constituent quarks and Goldstone bosons. Thus, light and strange baryons should be considered as systems of three constituent quarks with confining interaction and a chiral interaction that is mediated by Goldstone bosons between the constituent quarks. We show how the flavor-spin structure and sign of the short-range part of the Goldstone boson exchange interaction reduces the $SU(6)_{FS}$ symmetry down to $SU(3)_F \times SU(2)_S$, induces hyperfine splittings and provides correct ordering of the lowest states with positive and negative parity. We present a unified description of light and strange baryon spectra calculated in a semirelativistic framework. It is demonstrated that the same short-range part of Goldstone boson exchange also induces strong short-range repulsion in $NN$ system when the latter is treated as $6Q$ system. Thus, all main ingredients of $NN$ interaction are implied by the chiral constituent quark model since the long- and intermediate-range attraction appears in the present framework due to pion and correlated two-pion exchanges between quarks belonging to different nucleons. We also find a very strong short-range repulsion in $\Lambda\Lambda$ system with $J^P=0^+$. It then suggests that the compact H-particle should not exist.