Question

Is a quark‘s constituent mass affected by the chiral limit?

Answer 1

Is a quark‘s constituent mass affected by the chiral limit?

❱ Yes

Answer 2

Well, yes and no, but essentially no.

The constituent masses for the d and u, respectively, are 336 and 340MeV.

Their respective current masses are 4.3-5.2MeV and 1.8-2.8MeV.

So the current masses are negligible w.r.t. the constituent ones, of the order of 1%. Moreover, as you see, the current u is lighter than the d, but after chiral symmetry breaking the u is ever so slightly heavier than the d. There is a lot of slop in these determinations, and also electromagnetic effects, etc.

The takeaway expectation, then, is that setting the current masses equal to 0 would not take you far away from 330MeV.