Field transformations and the classical equation of motion in chiral perturbation theory

Abstract

The construction of effective Lagrangians commonly involves the application of the ‘‘classical equation of motion’’ to eliminate redundant structures and thus generate the minimal number of independent terms. We investigate this procedure in the framework of chiral perturbation theory with particular emphasis on the new features which appear at O(${\mathit{p}}^6$). The use of the ‘‘classical equation of motion’’ is interpreted in terms of field transformations. Such an interpretation is crucial if one wants to bring a given Lagrangian into a canonical form with a minimal number of terms. We emphasize that the application of field transformations leads to a modification of the coefficients of higher-order terms as well as eliminating structures, or what is equivalent, expressing certain structures in terms of already known different structures. This will become relevant once one considers the problem of expressing in canonical form a model effective interaction containing terms beyond next-to-leading order, i.e., beyond O(${\mathit{p}}^4$). In such circumstances the naive application of the clasical equation of motion to simply drop terms, as is commonly done at lowest order, leads to subtle errors, which we discuss.