Renormalization of relativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory and power counting

We discuss a renormalization scheme for relativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory which provides a simple and consistent power counting for renormalized diagrams. The method involves finite subtractions of dimensionally regularized diagrams beyond the standard MS¯ scheme of chiral perturbation theory to remove contributions violating the power counting. This is achieved by a suitable renormalization of the parameters of the most general effective Lagrangian. In addition to its simplicity our method has the benefit that it can be easily applied to multiloop diagrams. As an application we discuss the mass of the nucleon and compare the result with the expression of the infrared regularization of Becher and Leutwyler.