Within the Extended Nambu Jona-Lasinio model we analyse the $1/N_c$-corrections to the leading order result $M_S=2M_Q$ where $M_Q$ is the constituent quark mass.
We present a method to include colour-suppressed effects in the Mueller dipole picture. The model consistently includes saturation effects both in the evolution of dipoles and in the interactions of dipoles with a target in a frame-independent way. When implemented in a Monte Carlo simulation together with our previous model of energy--momentum conservation and a simple dipole description of initial state protons and virtual photons, the model is able to reproduce to a satisfactory degree both the gamma*-p cross sections as measured at HERA as well as the total p-p cross section all the way from ISR energies to the Tevatron and beyond.
We derive number of relations between quadrupole energy, elastic pressure, and shear force distributions in baryons using the large $N_c$ picture of baryons as chiral solitons. The obtained large $N_c$ relations are independent of particular dynamics and should hold in any picture in which the baryon is the chiral soliton. One of remarkable qualitative predictions of the soliton picture is the nullification of the tangential forces acting on the radial area element for any tensor polarisation of the baryon. The derived relations provide a powerful tool to check the hypothesis that the baryons are chiral solitons, say using lattice QCD.
We summarize recent attempts to calculate the flavor asymmetry of the nucleons sea quark distributions in the large-$N_c$ limit, where the nucleon can be described as a soliton of an effective chiral theory. We discuss the leading-twist longitudinally polarized and transversity antiquark distributions, $Deltabar u (x) - Deltabar d (x)$ and $deltabar u (x) - deltabar d (x)$, as well as the unpolarized one, $bar u (x) - bar d (x)$, which appears only in the next-to-leading order of the $1/N_c$-expansion. Results for $bar u (x) - bar d (x)$ are in good agreement with the recent Drell-Yan data from the FNAL E866 experiment. The longitudinally polarized antiquark asymmetry, $Deltabar u (x) - Deltabar d (x)$, is found to be larger than the unpolarized one.
The investigation of the scalar gluonium correlator is interesting because it carries the quantum numbers of the vacuum and the relevant hadronic current is related to the anomalous trace of the QCD energy-momentum tensor in the chiral limit. After reviewing the purely perturbative corrections known up to next-next-to-leading order, the behaviour of the correlator is studied to all orders by means of the large-beta_0 approximation. Similar to the QCD Adler function, the large-order behaviour is governed by the leading ultraviolet renormalon pole. The structure of infrared renormalon poles, being related to the operator product expansion are also discussed, as well as a low-energy theorem for the correlator that provides a relation to the renormalisation group invariant gluon condensate, and the vacuum matrix element of the trace of the QCD energy-momentum tensor.
We compute the three-loop QCD corrections to the massive quark form factors with external vector, axial-vector, scalar and pseudo-scalar currents. All corrections with closed loops of massless fermions are included. The non-fermionic part is computed in the large-$N_c$ limit, where only planar Feynman diagrams contribute.