Hadrons in strong electric and magnetic fields

We use chiral perturbation theory to investigate hadronic properties in strong electric and magnetic fields. A strong-field power counting is employed, and results for pions and nucleons are obtained using Schwinger's proper-time method. In the limit of weak fields. we accordingly recover the well-known one-loop chiral perturbation theory results for the electric and magnetic polarizabilities of pions and nucleons. In strong constant fields, we extend the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation. For the case of electric fields, we find that non-perturbative effects result in hadron decay. For sufficiently strong magnetic fields, the chiral analysis confirms that the nucleon hierarchy becomes inverted giving rise to proton beta-decay. Properties of asymptotic expansions are explored by considering weak field limits. In the regime where the perturbative expansion breaks down, the first-order term gives the best agreement with the non-perturbative result. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.