Meson-baryon scattering lengths without annihilation diagrams to order $p^4$ in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory

Abstract

We calculate the threshold $T$ matrices of the meson and baryon processes that have no annihilation diagrams: $\pi^{+}\Sigma^{+}$, $\pi^{+}\Xi^0$, $K^+p$, $K^+n$, and $\bar{K}^0\Xi^0$ to the fourth order in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. By performing least squares and Bayesian fits to the non-physical lattice QCD data, we determine the low-energy constants through both perturbative and non-perturbative iterative methods. By using these low-energy constants, we obtain the physical scattering lengths in these fits. The convergence behavior is not good across all channels in the perturbative method. The scattering lengths for the five channels, obtained by taking the median values from four different fitting approaches, are $a_{\pi^+\Sigma^+}=-0.16\pm 0.07\,\text{fm}$, $a_{\pi^+\Xi^0}=-0.04\pm0.04\,\text{fm}$, $a_{K^+p}=-0.41\pm 0.11\,\text{fm}$, $a_{K^+n}=-0.19\pm 0.10\,\text{fm}$, and $a_{\bar{K}^0\Xi^0}=-0.30\pm 0.07\,\text{fm}$, where the uncertainties are conservatively estimated by taking the maximum deviation between the median and extreme values of the statistical errors.