Decays ofl=1 baryons: Quark model versus largeNc

We study hadronic two-body decays of the orbitally excited, SU(6) 70-plet baryons in order to test the hypothesis that the successes of the nonrelativistic quark model have a natural explanation in the large-${\mathit{N}}_{\mathit{c}}$ limit of QCD. By working in a Hartree approximation, we isolate a specific set of operators that contribute to the observed s- and d-wave decays in leading order in 1/${\mathit{N}}_{\mathit{c}}$. We fit our results to the current experimental decay data, and make predictions for a number of allowed but unobserved modes. Our tentative conclusion is that there is more to the nonrelativistic quark model of baryons than large ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathit{c}}$.