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We investigate the relation between the known decompositions of the nucleon spin into its constituents, thereby clarifying in what respect they are common and in what respect they are different essentially. The decomposition recently proposed by Chen et al. can be thought of as a nontrivial generalization of the gauge-variant Jaffe-Manohar decomposition so as to meet the gauge-invariance requirement of each term of the decomposition. We however point out that there is another gaugeinvariant decomposition of the nucleon spin, which is closer to the Ji decomposition, while allowing the decomposition of the gluon total angular momentum into the spin and orbital parts. After clarifying the reason why the gauge-invariant decomposition of the nucleon spin is not unique, we discuss which decomposition is more preferable from an experimental viewpoint.

We carry out a systematic investigation of twist-two spin dependent structure functions of the nucleon within the framework of the chiral quark soliton model (CQSM) by paying special attention to the role of chiral symmetry of QCD. The importance of chiral symmetry is illustrated through the good reproduction of the recent SLAC data for the neutron spin structure function g n 1 (x, Q 2 ). We also observe substantial difference between the predictions of the longitudinally polarized distribution functions and those of the transversity distribution functions. That the chiral symmetry may be responsible for this difference is seen in the isospin dependence of the corresponding first moments, i.e. the axial and tensor charges. The CQSM predicts g 1

In a recent paper, we have shown that the way of gauge-invariant decomposition of the nucleon spin is not necessarily unique, but there still exists a preferable decomposition from the observational viewpoint. What was not complete in this argument is a fully satisfactory answer to the following questions. Does the proposed gauge-invariant decomposition, especially the decomposition of the gluon total angular momentum into its spin and orbital parts, correspond to observables which can be extracted from high-energy deep-inelastic-scattering measurements ? Is this decomposition not only gauge-invariant but also Lorentz frame-independent, so that it is legitimately thought to reflect an intrinsic property of the nucleon ? We show that we can answer both of these questions affirmatively, by making full use of a gauge-invariant decomposition of covariant angular momentum tensor of QCD in an arbitrary Lorentz frame.Comment: A slightly extended version to appear in Physical Review

The flavor asymmetry of the sea quark distribution as well as the unexpectedly small quark spin fraction of the nucleon are two outstanding discoveries recently made in the physics of deep-inelastic structure functions. We evaluate here the corresponding quark distribution functions within the framework of the chiral quark soliton model, which is an effective quark model of baryons maximally incorporating the most important feature of low energy QCD, i.e. the chiral symmetry and its spontaneous breakdown. It is shown that the model can explain qualitative features of the above-mentioned nucleon structure functions within a single framework, thereby disclosing the importance of chiral symmetry in the physics of high energy deep-inelastic scatterings.