SU(3) baryon chiral perturbation theory and long distance regularization -art. no. 036002.

The use of SU(3) chiral perturbation theory in the analysis of low energy m eson-baryon interactions is discussed. It is emphasized that short distance effects, arising from the propagation of Goldstone bosons over distances s maller than a typical hadronic size, are model-dependent and can lead to a lack of convergence in the SU(3) chiral expansion if they are included in l oop diagrams. In this paper we demonstrate how to remove such effects in a chirally consistent fashion by use of a cutoff and demonstrate that such a removal ameliorates problems which have arisen in previous calculations due to large loop effects. [S0556-2821(99)00603-7].