LAUSR

A previous formal derivation of the effective chiral Lagrangian for low-lying pseudoscalar mesons from first-principles QCD without approximations [Wang et al., Phys. Rev. D61, (2000) 54011] is generalized to further include scalar, vector, and axial-vector mesons. In the large Nc limit and with an Abelian approximation, we show that the properties of the newly added mesons in our formalism are determined by the corresponding underlying fundamental homogeneous Bethe--Salpeter equation in the ladder approximation, which yields the equations of motion for the scalar, vector, and axial-vector meson fields at the level of an effective chiral Lagrangian. The masses appearing in the equations of motion of the meson fields are those determined by the corresponding Bethe--Salpeter equation.