Light pseudoscalar mesons in Bethe-Salpeter equation with instantaneous interaction

The light pseudoscalar mesons play a twofold role: they may or have to be regarded both as low-lying bound states of the fundamental degrees of freedom of quantum chromodynamics and as the (pseudo) Goldstone bosons of the spontaneously broken chiral symmetries of quantum chromodynamics. We interrelate these aspects in a single quantum-field-theoretic approach relying on the Bethe-Salpeter formalism in instantaneous approximation by very simple means: the shape of the pseudoscalar-meson Bethe-Salpeter wave function dictated by chiral symmetry is used in Bethe-Salpeter equations for bound states of vanishing mass, in order to deduce analytically the interactions which govern the bound states under study. In this way, we obtain exact Bethe-Salpeter solutions for pseudoscalar mesons, in the sense of establishing the rigorous relationship between, on the one hand, the relevant interactions and, on the other hand, the Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes that characterize the bound states.