A quark-diquark model for parity doublet structure of baryons

The chiral invariant mass of baryons is a phenomenological input of parity doublet models, and its microscopic origin remains an open question. We propose that the chiral invariant mass and the parity doublet structure originate from the diquarks: the scalar ($0^+$) and pseudoscalar ($0^-$) diquarks form a parity doublet whose invariant mass is generated by gluon dynamics rather than by the quark condensate. We construct a three-flavor chiral quark--diquark model in which a quark and a diquark are bounded into a baryon through a chiral-invariant four-body interaction whose structure is reduced from one-gluon exchange. It is shown that the quark--diquark structure automatically yields the two chiral representations and the mirror assignment of the parity doublet model, and the composite baryons acquire chiral invariant masses even for massless quarks. We find that the octet baryon spectrum and the nucleon sigma terms are reproduced very well with a minimal set of parameters. Furthermore, after chiral symmetry restoration, the model predicts a distinctive inverted mass hierarchy: the nucleon remains relatively heavy, whereas the $\Sigma$ and $\Xi$ baryon become lighter than the nucleon. This inverse mass ordering may therefore provide a novel, experimentally testable signature towards chiral symmetry restoration.