Strange magnetism in the nucleon

Abstract Using heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory to one loop, we derive an analytic and parameter-free expression for the momentum dependence of the strange magnetic form factor of the nucleon G M ( s ) ( Q 2 ) and its corresponding radius. This should be considered as a lower bound. We also derive a model-independent relation between the isoscalar magnetic and the strange magnetic form factors of the nucleon based on chiral symmetry and SU(3) only. This gives an upper bound on the strange magnetic form factor. We use these limites to derive bounds on the strange magnetic moment of the proton from the recent measurement of G M (s) (Q 2 =0.1 GeV 2 ) by the SAMPLE collaboration. We further stress the relevance of this result for the on-going and future experimental programs at various electron machines.