Chiral Symmetry of Baryons

We study chiral symmetry aspects of the positive and negative parity baryons by identifying them with linear representations of the chiral group $SU(N_{f}) \otimes SU(N_{f})$. It is shown that there are two distinctive schemes: naive and mirror assignments. We construct linear sigma models for baryons in the two assignments and examine their physical implications. Then we investigate properties of the naive and mirror nucleons microscopically by using QCD interpolating fields. Finally, we propose experiments to distinguish the two chiral assignments for the nucleon.