ar X iv : h ep - p h / 04 10 27 4 v 1 2 0 O ct 2 00 4 Strong Decays of Baryons

A Poincaré-invariant description of mesonic baryon resonance decays is presented following the point form of relativistic quantum mechanics. In this contribution we focus on pionic decay modes. It is found that the theoretical results in general underestimate the experimental ones considerably. Furthermore, the problem of a nontrivial normalization factor appearing in the definition of the decay operator is investigated. The present results for decay widths suggest a normalization factor that is consistent with the choice adopted for the current operator in the studies of electroweak nucleon form factors.