Low-Energy Limits and Renormalization in Meson Theory

Abstract

A technique is developed for deriving rigorous expressions for zero-energy mesonic processes. Making use of the ambiguity of mesonic charge renormalization, the coupling constant is defined by zero-energy pion-nucleon scattering. The threshold photomeson production amplitude is also calculated. The experimental value of the coupling constant defined by scattering is at least an order of magnitude less than that of the coupling constant deduced from the photoproduction data. It is shown that pair suppression effects are absent in both cases. The possibility that the results obtained imply disagreement of pseudoscalar theory with experiment is discussed.