Negative Parity Baryons in the QCD Sum Rule

Masses and couplings of the negative parity excited baryons are studied in the QCD sum rule. Separation of the negative-parity spectrum is proposed and is applied to the flavor octet and singlet baryons. We find that the quark condensate is responsible for the mass splitting of the ground and the negative-parity excited states. This is expected from the chiral symmetry and supports the idea that the negative-parity baryon forms a parity doublet with the ground state. The meson-baryon coupling constants are also computed for the excited states in the QCD sum rule. It is found that the \pi NN^* coupling vanishes in the chiral limit.