Constituent and current quark masses at low chiral energies

Light constituent quark masses and the corresponding dynamical quark masses are determined by data, the Quark-Level Linear σ Model, and infrared QCD (quantum chromodynamics). This allows to define effective non-strange and strange current quark masses which reproduce the experimental pion and kaon masses very accurately, by simple additivity. Moreover, the masses of the light scalar mesons σ(600) and κ(800) can be obtained straightforwardly from the constituent quark masses. In contrast, the usual nonstrange and strange current quark masses employed by Chiral Perturbation Theory do not allow a simple quantitative explanation of the pion and kaon masses. (authors)