The role of five-quark components in gamma decay of the Delta(1232)

An admixture of 10-20 % of qqqq\bar q components in the Delta(1232) resonance is shown to reduce the well known underprediction for the decay width for Delta(1232)->N gamma decay by about half and that of the corresponding helicity amplitudes from a factor ~ 1.7 to ~ 1.5. The main effect is due to the quark-antiquark annihilation transitions qqqq\bar q -> qqq gamma, the consideration of which brings the ratio A_{3/2}/A_{1/2} and consequently the E2/M1 ratio R_{EM} into agreement with the empirical value. Transitions between qqqq\bar q components in the resonance and the nucleon qqqq\bar q->qqqq\bar q gamma are shown to enhance the calculated width by only a few percent, as long as the probability of the qqqq\bar q component of the Delta(1232) and the proton is at most ~ 20 %. The transitions qqqq\bar q->qqqq\bar q gamma between the qqqq\bar q components in the Delta(1232) and the proton do not lead to a nonzero value for R_{EM}.