Baryons in Partially-Quenched Chiral Perturbation Theory

The motivation for including baryons into partially-quenched QCD (PQQCD), or more specifically partially-quenched chiral perturbation theory (PQχPT), is clear. One wishes to take partially-quenched (PQ) lattice simulations of observables of interest that in the foreseeable future will be performed with quark masses that are heavier than those of nature, and make rigorous predictions for these observables in QCD. The way that such predictions will be made is to use PQ lattice simulations to “match” onto a PQ effective field theory (PQEFT), and then use the explicit quark mass dependence of the PQEFT to make predictions at the physical values of the light quark masses, i.e. the coefficients of the local operators in the PQEFT will be determined from the PQ lattice simulations.