Nucleon-pion-state contribution to nucleon two-point correlation functions

We study the nucleon-pion-state contribution to the QCD two-point function of the standard nucleon interpolating fields. For sufficiently small quark masses these two-particle states are expected to have a smaller total energy than the single-particle excited states. We calculate the nucleon-pion-state contribution to leading order in chiral perturbation theory. Both parity channels are considered. We find the nucleon-pion-state contribution to be small, contributing at the few percent level to the effective mass in the positive parity channel.