Hadronic Decays of Baryons in Point-Form Relativistic Quantum Mechanics

We discuss strong decays of baryon resonances within the concept of relativistic constituent quark models. In particular, we follow a Poincare-invariant approach along the point form of relativistic quantum mechanics. Here, we focus on pionic decay modes of N and Delta resonances. It is found that the covariant quark-model predictions calculated in the point-form spectator model in general underestimate the experimental data considerably. This points to a systematic defect in the used decay operator and/or the baryon wave functions. From a detailed investigation of the point-form decay operator it is seen that the requirement of translational invariance implies effective many-body contributions. Furthermore, one has to employ a normalization factor in the definition of the decay operator in the point-form spectator model. Our analysis suggests that this normalization factor is best chosen consistently with the one used for the electromagnetic and axial current operators for elastic nucleon form factors.