Nucleon form factors and parton distributions in nonlocal chiral effective theory

We present a review of recent applications of nonlocal chiral effective theory to hadron structure studies. Starting from a nonlocal meson–baryon effective chiral Lagrangian, we show how the introduction of a correlation function representing the finite extent of hadrons regularizes the meson loop integrals and introduces momentum dependence in vertex form factors in a gauge invariant manner. We apply the framework to the calculation of nucleon electromagnetic form factors, unpolarized and polarized parton distributions, as well as transverse momentum dependent distributions and generalized parton distributions.