CHIRAL QUARK MODELS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS

We give an overview of chiral quark models, both for the pure light sector and the heavy-light sector. We describe how such models can be bosonized to obtain well known chiral Lagrangians which can be inferred from the symmetries of QCD alone. In addition, the coefficients of the various pieces of the chiral Lagrangians can be calculated within these models. We discuss a few applications of the models, in particular, B−B mixing and processes of the type B → DD̄, where D might be both pseudoscalar and vector. We suggest how the formalism might be extended to include light vectors (ρ, ω,K∗), and heavy to light transitions like B → π. PACS numbers: 12.39.-x, 12.39.Fe UDC 539.12