Recent developments in effective field theory

Abstract

We will give a short introduction to the one-nucleon sector of chiral perturbation theory and will address the issue of a consistent power counting and renormalization. We will discuss the infrared regularization and the extended on-mass-shell scheme. Both allow for the inclusion of further degrees of freedom beyond pions and nucleons and the application to higher-loop calculations. As applications we consider the chiral expansion of the nucleon mass to order O(q^6) and the inclusion of vector and axial-vector mesons in the calculation of nucleon form factors.

Comments: 8 pages, 6 figures, invited talk given at International School of Nuclear Physics, 29th Course "Quarks in Hadrons and Nuclei", Erice, Sicily, 16 - 24 September 2007