On the nature of the image and image from their image behavior in chiral dynamics Original Research Article

We study the behavior with the number of colors (Nc) of the Λ(1405) and Λ(1670) resonances obtained dynamically within the chiral unitary approach. The leading order meson–baryon interaction, used as the kernel of the unitarization procedure, manifests a nontrivial Nc dependence of the flavor SU(3) representation for baryons. As a consequence, the SU(3) singlet (or View the MathML source) component of the Λ(1405) states remains bound in the large Nc limit, while the other components dissolve into the continuum. Introducing explicit SU(3) breaking, we obtain the Nc dependence of the excitation energy, masses and widths of the physical Λ(1405) and Λ(1670) resonances. The Nc behavior of the decay widths is found to be different from the general counting rule for a qqq state, indicating the dynamical origin of these resonances.