Affiliation:
1. Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan
Abstract
Is gauge-invariant complete decomposition of the nucleon spin possible? Although it is a difficult theoretical question which has not reached a complete consensus yet, a general agreement now is that there are at least two physically inequivalent gauge-invariant decompositions (I) and (II) of the nucleon. In these two decompositions, the intrinsic spin parts of quarks and gluons are just common. What discriminate these two decompositions are the orbital angular momentum parts. The orbital angular momenta of quarks and gluons appearing in the decomposition (I) are the so-called "mechanical" orbital angular momenta, while those appearing in the decomposition (II) are the generalized (gauge-invariant) "canonical" ones. By this reason, these decompositions are also called the "mechanical" and "canonical" decompositions of the nucleon spin, respectively. A crucially important question is which decomposition is more favorable from the observational viewpoint. The main objective of this concise review is to try to answer this question with careful consideration of recent intensive researches on this problem.
Publisher
World Scientific Pub Co Pte Lt
Subject
Astronomy and Astrophysics,Nuclear and High Energy Physics,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Cited by
78 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献