Quarks, Baryons and Chiral Symmetry

Book excerpt: This book describes baryon models constructed from quarks, mesons and chiral symmetry. The role of chiral symmetry and of quark model structure with SU(6) spin-flavor symmetry are discussed in detail, starting from a pedagogic introduction. Emphasis is placed on symmetry aspects of the theories. As an application, the chiral bag model is studied for nucleon structure, where important methods of theoretical physics, mostly related to the semiclassical approach for a system of strong interactions, are demonstrated. The text is more practical than formal; tools and ideas are explained in detail while solving actual problems. By checking each step of the computations, readers can learn not only the calculational techniques but also the essential ideas behind them.