Vector meson dominance and the ρ meson -: art. no. 074020

We discuss the properties of vector mesons, in particular the rho(0), in the context of the hidden local symmetry (HLS) model. This provides a unified framework to study several aspects of the low energy QCD sector. First, we show that in the HLS model the physical photon is massless, without requiring off field diagonalization. We then demonstrate the equivalence of HLS and the two existing representations of vector meson dominance, VMD1 and VMD2, at both the tree level and one loop order. Finally the S matrix pole position is shown to provide a model and process independent means of specifying the rho mass and width, in contrast with the real axis prescription currently used in the Particle Data Group tables. [S0556-2821(99)02807-6].