Field Transformations and the Classical Equation of Motion in Chiral Perturbation Theory

The construction of effective Lagrangians commonly involves the application of the `classical equation of motion' to eliminate redundant structures and thus generate the minimal number of independent terms. We investigate this procedure in the framework of chiral perturbation theory. The use of the 'classical equation of motion' is interpreted in terms of field transformations. Such an interpretation is crucial if one wants to bring a given Lagrangian into a canonical form with a minimal number of terms. We emphasize that the application of field transformations not only eliminates structures, or, what is equivalent, expresses certain structures in terms of already known different structures, but also leads to a modification of coefficients of higher--order terms. This will become relevant, once one considers effective interaction terms beyond next--to--leading order, i.e., beyond $O(p^4)$.