SU(3) Baryon Chiral Perturbation Theory and Long Distance Regularization

The use of SU(3) chiral perturbation theory in the analysis of low energy meson-baryon interactions is discussed. It is emphasized that short distance effects, arising from propagation of Goldstone bosons over distances smaller than a typical hadronic size, are model-dependent and can lead to a lack of convergence in the SU(3) chiral expansion if they are included in loop diagrams. In this paper we demonstrate how to remove such effects in a chirally consistent fashion by use of a cutoff and demonstrate that such removal ameliorates problems which have arisen in previous calculations due to large loop effects.