π N scattering in the Δ(1232) region in an effective field theory

We develop a generalized version of heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory to describe pion nucleon scattering in a kinematic domain that extends continuously from threshold to the delta isobar peak. The P-wave phase shifts are used to illustrate this framework. We also compare our approach with those in the literature that concern the delta resonance. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.