CHIRAL DYNAMICS AND THE LOW-ENERGY KAON-NUCLEON INTERACTION

We examine the meson-baryon interaction in the strangeness S = -1 sector using an effective chiral Lagrangian, Potentials are derived from this Lagrangian and used in a coupled-channel calculation of the low-energy observables. The potentials are constructed such that in the Born approximation the s-wave scattering length is the same as that given by the effective chiral Lagrangian, up to order q(2). A comparison is made with the available low-energy hadronic data of the coupled K(-)p, Sigma pi, Lambda pi system, which includes the Lambda(1405) resonance, K(-)p elastic and inelastic scattering, and the threshold branching ratios of the K(-)p decay. Good fits to the experimental data and estimates of previously unknown Lagrangian parameters are obtained.