The Spin of the Proton

TL;DR

Over twenty years, significant progress has been made in understanding the proton's spin structure, revealing the non-perturbative nature of the discrepancy between naive quark models and experimental data.

Contribution

The paper reviews the evolution of proton spin research, emphasizing how modern relativistic and chiral models explain experimental findings and the role of polarized gluons.

Findings

Limited polarized gluon contributions to proton spin

Non-perturbative effects explain spin discrepancy

Modern models align with experimental data

Abstract

The twenty years since the announcement of the proton spin crisis by the European Muon Collaboration has seen tremendous progress in our knowledge of the distribution of spin within the proton. The problem is reviewed, beginning with the original data and the suggestion that polarized gluons may play a crucial role in resolving the problem through the U(1) axial anomaly. The discussion continues to the present day where not only have strong limits have been placed on the amount of polarized glue in the proton but the experimental determination of the spin content has become much more precise. It is now clear that the origin of the discrepancy between experiment and the naive expectation of the fraction of spin carried by the quarks and anti-quarks in the proton lies in the non-perturabtive structure of the proton. We explain how the features expected in a modern, relativistic and chirally symmetric description of nucleon structure naturally explain the current data.