In previous publications we have analyzed the strong and electromagnetic decays of heavy mesons and heavy baryons in a formalism which incorporates heavy-quark and chiral symmetries. There are two possible symmetry-breaking effects on the chiral dynamics of heavy hadrons: the finite-mass effects from light quarks and the $\frac{1}{m_Q}$ corrections from heavy quarks. In the present paper, chiral-symmetry-breaking effects are studied and applications to various strong and radiative decays of heavy hadrons are illustrated. SU(3) violations induced by chiral loops in the radiative decays of charmed mesons and charmed baryons are compared with those predicted by the constituent quark model. In particular, available data for $D^{*}$ decays favor values of the parameters in chiral perturbation theory which give predictions for $D^{*}$ decays close to the quark model results except for the $D_s^{*+}$. Implications are discussed.

• Received 23 December 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.49.5857