QUENCHED AND PARTIALLY QUENCHED CHIRAL PERTURBATION-THEORY FOR VECTORAND TENSOR MESONS

Quenched and partially quenched chiral perturbation theory for vector mesons is developed and is used to extract the chiral loop correction to the p meson mass. Connections to fully quenched and totally unquenc hed chiral perturbation theory results are discussed. It is also shown that (partially) quenched perturbation theory for tensor mesons can b e formulated analogously, and the chiral corrections for tensor meson masses are directly proportional to their counterparts in the vector m eson sector. Utilizing this observation and non-relativistic quark mod el, we point out that the mass difference (m(a2) -3/2m(p)) is ''quench ing-insensitive'' in the large-N-c limit. This quantity may be used fo r normalization of mass scale in lattice QCD calculations. (C) 1998 El sevier Science B.V.