Electromagnetic and axial structures of Baryon ground and resonant states

This thesis is devoted to the investigation of the electroweak structures of baryons. One performs a comprehensive study of the electromagnetic and axial form factors of baryon ground states with flavors 'up', 'down', and 'strange'; regarding baryon resonances the axial charges are investigated. The dynamics for the description of baryons is furnished by the relativistic constituent-quark model, of which three different variants are applied here. The calculations are performed in the framework of relativistic quantum mechanics, where the electromagnetic and axial current operators are constructed along a spectator model in the point-form.While the evaluations of the electroweak form factors are based on an already established formalism, one develops a generally valid formulation for the axial charges. Thereby it becomes possible to calculate these quantities for arbitrary baryon states and completely general interaction models.It turns out that relativistic constituent-quark models can describe in the framework of a Poincare-invariant formalism not only the electromagnetic but also the axial form factors, which are calculated here for the first time for all baryons. Globally, a good agreement with experiment is achieved up to momentum transfers of about 4 GeV/c. With regard to the particularly sensitive quantities, like the electric radii and magnetic moments, the constituent-quark model based on Goldstone-boson exchange yields the best results. In cases, where no experimental data exist, the predictions agree well with results from lattice quantum chromodynamics. The analogue is true for the axial charges of baryon ground and resonant states. Except for some special cases, their values are presented here for the first time comprehensively and consistently. (author)