Derivation of O(q^4) Effective Pion-Nucleon Lagrangian Within Heavy Baryon Chiral Perturbation Theory

Abstract

We construct a complete list of O(q^4) terms directly within Heavy Baryon Chiral Perturbation Theory (HBChPT) in the absence of external fields and assuming isospin symmetry. In addition to a phase rule recently developed (NPA646, 343, '99), a variety of algebraic identities and reparameterization invariance, are used to ensure linear independence of the terms and their low energy coupling constants. We first construct O(q^4) terms terms for off-shell nucleons, and then perform the on-shell reduction, again within HBChPT. We discuss an application of the O(q^4) terms to the evaluation of the O(q^4) operator insertions in the "contact graph" of pion double charge exchange.