Sum Rules and Moments of the Nucleon Spin Structure Functions

Journal Article · Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2005

OSTI ID:842942

Chen, Jian-Ping; Deur, Alexandre; Meziani, Zein-Eddine

The nucleon has been used as a laboratory to investigate its own spin structure and Quantum Chromodynamics. New experimental data on nucleon spin structure at low to intermediate momentum transfers combined with existing high momentum transfer data offer a comprehensive picture of the transition region from the confinement regime of the theory to its asymptotic freedom regime. Insight for some aspects of the theory is gained by exploring lower moments of spin structure functions and their corresponding sum rules (i.e. the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn, Bjorken and Burkhardt-Cottingham). These moments are expressed in terms of an operator product expansion using quark and gluon degrees of freedom at moderately large momentum transfers. The sum rules are verified to a good accuracy assuming that no singular behavior of the structure functions is present at very high excitation energies. The higher twist contributions have been examined through the moments evolution as the momentum transfer varies from higher to lower values. Furthermore, QCD-inspired low energy effective theories, which explicitly include chiral symmetry breaking, are tested at low momentum transfers. The validity of these theories is further examined as the momentum transfer increases to moderate values. It is found that chiral perturbation calculations agree reasonably well with the first moment of the spin structure function g{sub 1} at momentum transfer of 0.1 GeV{sup 2} but fail to reproduce the neutron data in the case of the generalized polarizability {delta}{sub LT}.

• Research Organization: Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-84ER40150
• OSTI ID: 842942
• Report Number(s): JLAB-PHY-05-398; DOE/ER/40150-3563; TRN: US0503767
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ACCURACY
CHIRAL SYMMETRY
CONFINEMENT
DEGREES OF FREEDOM
EXCITATION
GLUONS
MOMENTUM TRANSFER
NEUTRONS
NUCLEONS
OPERATOR PRODUCT EXPANSION
POLARIZABILITY
QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
QUARKS
SPIN
STRUCTURE FUNCTIONS
SUM RULES