  Chiral perturbation theory makes definitive predictions for the extrinsic
behavior of hadrons in external electric and magnetic fields. Near the chiral
limit, the electric and magnetic polarizabilities of pions, kaons, and nucleons
are determined in terms of a few well-known parameters. In this limit, hadrons
become quantum mechanically diffuse as polarizabilities scale with the inverse
square-root of the quark mass. In some cases, however, such predictions from
chiral perturbation theory have not compared well with experimental data.
Ultimately we must turn to first principles numerical simulations of QCD to
determine properties of hadrons, and confront the predictions of chiral
perturbation theory. To address the electromagnetic polarizabilities, we
utilize the background field technique. Restricting our attention to
calculations in background electric fields, we demonstrate new techniques to
determine electric polarizabilities and baryon magnetic moments for both
charged and neutral states. As we can study the quark mass dependence of
observables with lattice QCD, the lattice will provide a crucial test of our
understanding of low-energy QCD, which will be timely in light of ongoing
experiments, such as at COMPASS and HI\gamma S.
