Including virtual photons in strong interactions

In the perturbative field-theoretical models we investigate the inclusion of the electromagnetic interactions into the purely strong theory that describes hadronic processes. In particular, we study the convention for splitting electromagnetic and strong interactions and the ambiguity of such a splitting. The issue of the interpretation of the parameters of the low-energy effective field theory in the presence of electromagnetic interactions is addressed, as well as the scale and gauge dependence of the effective theory couplings. We hope, that the results of these studies are relevant for the electromagnetic sector of ChPT.Received: 30 September 2002, Published online: 22 October 2003PACS: 13.40.Ks Electromagnetic corrections to strong- and weak-interaction processes - 13.40.Dk Electromagnetic mass differences - 11.30.Rd Chiral symmetries - 11.10.Hi Renormalization group evolution of parameters