New constraints on resonance saturation in chiral perturbation theory are investigated. These constraints arise because each consistent saturation scheme must map to a representation of the full QCD chiral symmetry group. The low-energy constants of chiral perturbation theory are then related by a set of mixing angles. It is shown that vector meson dominance is a consequence of the fact that nature has chosen the lowest-dimensional nontrivial chiral representation. It is further shown that chiral symmetry places an upper bound on the mass of the lightest scalar in the hadron spectrum.

• Received 2 November 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.61.116005