Are there infinitely many decompositions of the nucleon spin ?

Abstract

We discuss the uniqueness or non-uniqueness problem of the decomposition of the gluon field into the physical and pure-gauge components, which is the basis of the recently proposed two physically inequivalent gauge-invariant decompositions of the nucleon spin. It is crucialy important to recognize the fact that the standard gauge fixing procedure is essentially a process of projecting out the physical components of the massless gauge field. A complexity of the nonabelian gauge theory as compared with the abelian case is that a closed expression for the physical component can be given only with use of the non-local Wilson line, which is generally path-dependent. It is known that, by choosing an infinitely long straight-line path in space and time, the direction of which is characterized by a constant 4-vector $n^{\mu }$, one can cover a class of gauge called the general axial gauge, containing three popular gauges, i.e. the temporal, the light-cone, and the spatial axial gauge. Within this general axial gauge, we have calculated the 1-loop evolution matrix for the quark and gluon longitudinal spins in the nucleon. We found that the final answer is exactly the same independently of the choices of $n^{\mu }$, which amounts to proving the gauge-independence and path-independence simultaneously, although within a restricted class of gauges and paths. By drawing on all of these findings together with well-established knowledge from gauge theories, we argue against the rapidly spreading view in the community that there are infinitely many decompositions of the nucleon spin.

37 pages, 5 figures, Version to appear in Physical Review D. The logic of the whole argument in the paper was drastically changed. The delicacy of the gauge-invariant but the path-dependent formulation of gauge theories is discussed in some detail

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• On the two remaning issues in the gauge-invariant decomposition problem of the nucleon spin
• A still unsettled issue in the nucleon spin decomposition problem : On the role of surface terms and gluon topology
• Gauge Invariant Descriptions of Gluon Polarizations Revisited
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