Rho Meson Properties in the Chiral Theory Framework

We study the mass, width and couplings of the lightest resonance multiplet with I(J^{PC})=1(1^{--}) quantum numbers. Effective field theories based on chiral symmetry are employed in order to describe the form factor associated with the two-pseudoscalar matrix element of the QCD vector current. The bare poles of the intermediate resonances are regularized through a Dyson-Schwinger-like summation. We explore the role of the resonance width in physical observables and make a coupled-channel analysis of final-state interactions. This provides many interesting properties, as the pole mass M_rho{pole}= 764.1 +- 2.7 +4.0-2.5 MeV. At energies E~1 GeV, a second 1(1^{--}) resonance multiplet is considered in order to describe the data in a more consistent way. From the phenomenologically extracted resonance couplings, we obtain the chiral coupling L_9^r(mu0)= (7.04 +- 0.05 +0.19-0.27)* 10^{-3}, at mu0=770$ MeV, and show how the running with the scale mu affects the resonance parameters. A 1/N_C counting is adopted in this work and the consistency of the large--N_C expansion is tested. Finally, we make an estimation of the contribution from diagrams with resonances in crossed channels.