On the Damping of Virtual Nucleon-Pair Formation in Pseudoscalar Meson Theory

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Abstract
The modifications of the propagation characteristics of a nucleon which result from the presence of a strongly coupled mesonic self-field are estimated from the consideration of a simple subset of radiative corrections to the nucleon propagation function. It is found that reactive effects markedly inhibit nucleon pair formation so that the contributions from the pseudoscalar coupling term which do not involve nucleon pairs are strongly enhanced relative to those involving pair formation. In addition, the meson pair coupling term, which results from nonrelativistic approximations to the relativistic linear coupling term and is intimately connected with nucleon pair formation, is strongly damped. The relation of this result to the nonrelativistic theory of Wentzel is discussed.