# Reply to Comment on “Determination of pion-baryon coupling constants from QCD sum rules”

In his Comment, Kim criticises the sum rules obtained in Ref. for pion-baryon coupling constants. In particular he suggests that the treatment of the continuum in our work is inconsistent, and he presents a different perturbative model for the continuum that leads to rather different results.

However Kim’s arguments rely heavily on the use of single dispersion relations to take into account the continuum contributions to the correlation function. These are assumed to take the form

$`\mathrm{\Pi }^{\mathrm{cont}}(p^2)={\displaystyle _S^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑s{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _{\mathrm{OPE}}(s)}{sp^2}}+\mathrm{},`$ (1)   
up to subtraction terms which are needed to cancel divergences of the integral over $`s`$ and which form a polynomial in $`p^2`$. Here is $`S`$ is some threshold above which the perturbative continuum from the operator-product expansion (OPE) is assumed to provide a good approximation to the true spectral density $`\rho (s)`$. This is the form familiar in the analysis of sum rules for hadron masses, which are obtained from vacuum-to-vacuum two-point correlators. In contrast, meson-to-vacuum correlators or correlators in the presence of an external field should be represented by a double dispersion relation. This is because the external meson or field can cause transitions between different states that are created or annihilated by the chosen interpolating fields. A separate dispersion relation is thus needed for each of the hadron “propagators” corresponding to the initial and final hadrons. (For more details, see Ref.). In the general case where the external meson or field carries nonzero momentum $`q`$, the continuum contribution can be written as

$`\mathrm{\Pi }^{\mathrm{cont}}(p_1^2,p_2^2,q^2)={\displaystyle _{S_1}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑s_1{\displaystyle _{S_2}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑s_2{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _{\mathrm{OPE}}(s_1,s_2,q^2)}{(s_1p_1^2)(s_2p_2^2)}}+\mathrm{},`$ (2)   
where $`S_1`$ and $`S_2`$ are (possibly different) thresholds.

To obtain the sum rules of Ref. we expanded around the chiral limit and so we worked in the limit $`q^20`$. In this case $`p_1^2=p_2^2p^2`$ and so a single momentum flows through the correlator. At first sight one might think that the use of the single dispersion relation in $`p^2`$ is legitimate, since one could split up the denominator in (2) and perform the integration over either $`s_1`$ or $`s_2`$ first. However, this impression is misleading: the integrals over $`s_1`$ and $`s_2`$ are ultraviolet divergent and, moreover, the subtraction terms that are needed for the integral over $`s_1`$ ($`s_2`$) appear multiplying an unknown function of $`p_2^2`$ ($`p_1^2`$). Hence, even in the limit of $`q^20`$, one cannot cancel the divergences of the integral in Eq. (2) by a simple polynomial in $`p^2`$. The above representation of $`\mathrm{\Pi }^{\mathrm{cont}}(p^2,p^2,0)`$ is thus not equivalent to a single dispersion relation. As stressed by Ioffe, important features of QCD sum rules for coupling constants, such as the double pole at $`p^2=M_N^2`$ and the single pole due to nucleon-to-continuum transitions and the associated subtraction terms, rely on the use of a double dispersion relation.

As an example of our treatment of the continuum, consider the dimension-5 term in our sum rule, which arises from a term of the form $`C\mathrm{ln}(p^2)`$ in the OPE. The corresponding spectral density that reproduces this logarithm (up to subtraction constants) has the form

$$\rho _{\mathrm{OPE}}(s_1,s_2,0)=Cs_1\delta (s_1s_2).$$
(3)   
If we use this perturbative density in Eq. (2), starting at some threshold $`S`$, as our model for the continuum on the phenomenological side of the sum rule, we obtain

$$\mathrm{\Pi }^{\mathrm{cont}}(p^2,p^2,0)=C_S^{\mathrm{}}𝑑s\frac{s}{(sp^2)^2}=C\left[\mathrm{ln}(Sp^2)\frac{S}{Sp^2}+\mathrm{}\right],$$
(4)   
up to terms that vanish after Borel transforming.

Taking the Borel transform of Eq. (4) with respect to $`Q^2=p^2`$ gives a perturbative continuum contribution of the form

$$CM^2\left(1+\frac{S}{M^2}\right)\mathrm{exp}(S/M^2).$$

When this is taken over to the OPE side of the sum rule, it leads to the replacement of $`CM^2`$ (the Borel transform of $`C\mathrm{ln}(p^2)`$) by $`CM^2E_1(S/M^2)`$, as in our paper. (The functions $`E_n(x)`$ are defined in the usual way: $`E_n(x)=1(1+x+\mathrm{}+x^n/n!)e^x`$.) A similar treatment of the dimension-3 term generates a factor of $`E_2(S/M^2)`$.

The approach outlined here, which was used in Ref., is based on a simple perturbative model for the spectral density, which is assumed to start at some threshold $`S`$. This is then inserted in the double dispersion relation for the correlator where it gives rise to logarithmic discontinuities, starting at the threshold $`p^2=S`$, as well as threshold singularities, which in this case are poles. Kim raises questions about the unphysical nature of these poles and their consistency with ideas of duality. However duality tells us only that the hadronic spectral density at high energies can be well approximated by a spectral density of quarks and gluons. The whole threshold, together with any associated singularities, is an artefact of our crude modelling of the continuum at lower energies, where hadronic resonances are important. Moreover, any simple pole-plus-continuum ansatz for the phenomenological spectral density ignores many of the singularities (cuts and threshold singularities) that will be present in the real correlator. The whole sum-rule approach relies on the assumption that in some averaged sense the main features of the real correlator are reproduced by the ansatz used on the phenomenological side of the sum rule. Hence any model of this type for the continuum should be used only in the context of some procedure for averaging over $`p^2`$, such as the Borel transform. Its detailed form as a function of $`p^2`$ should not be taken too seriously.

We therefore believe that our treatment of the continuum is consistent with duality and, more importantly, with the fact that the correlator in the presence of an external meson or field should be represented by a double dispersion relation.

Finally we do acknowledge one correction which does need to be made to the results of Ref.. This concerns the contribution of the dimension-7 condensate. In Ref. a contribution of this term to the continuum was included, which led to a factor of $`E_0(S/M^2)`$ in that term in the sum rule. Since, as Kim points out, the corresponding term in the OPE has the form $`1/p^2`$, with no logarithm, it does not contribute to the perturbative continuum. The factor $`E_0`$ should therefore be replaced by 1. However this term is small; indeed it was included only in order to estimate the size of dimension-7 contributions to the sum rule. Hence the numerical results of Ref. remain practically unchanged.