Effective Chiral Lagrangians with an SU(3)-Broken Vector-Meson Sector

The accuracy of effective chiral lagrangians including vector-mesons as (hidden symmetry) gauge fields is shown to be improved by taking into account SU(3)-breaking in the vector-meson sector. The masses, $M_V$, and couplings to the photon field and pseudoscalar pairs, $f_{V\gamma }$ and $g_{VPP}$, are all consistently described in terms of two parameters, which also fit the values for the pseudoscalar decay-constants, $f_P$, and charge radii, $<r_P^2>$. The description of the latter is further improved when working in the context of chiral perturbation theory.