Chiral symmetry and the A1 contribution to the nucleon-nucleon interaction

The contribution of A₁ exchange to the nucleon-nucleon potential is studied in a broken chiral symmetric model. The A₁ is treated as a finite-width resonance in the πρ s-wave. Connections between pseudoscalar and pseudovector pion-nucleon coupling in the underlying model lagrangian are studied in detail. It is found that large terms in the NN interaction arising from πρ exchange with pseudoscalar coupling are suppressed by interference with a₁ exchange. With pseudovector coupling there is a suppression of the A₁ exchange by the so-called “seagull” terms in πρ exchange which arise from gauge invariance. The suppression becomes an exact cancellation in the limit of infinite ρ and a₁ masses and exact chiral symmetry. We found that inclusion of the a₁ decay into the πρ state strongly modifies the a₁] exchange potential, suppressing the tensor part but leaving the spin-spin part almost unchanged.