No abstract

We identify quark and gluon helicity-flip distributions defined between nucleon states of unequal momenta. The evolution of these distributions with change of renormalization scale is calculated in the leading-logarithmic approximation. The helicity-flip gluon distributions do not mix with any quark distribution and are thus a unique signature of gluons in the nucleon. Their contribution to the generalized virtual Compton process is obtained both in the form of a factorization theorem and an operator product expansion. In deeply virtual Compton scattering, they can be probed through distinct angular dependence of the cross section.

In analogy to the Altarelli-Parisi equation for the quark and gluon helicity contributions to the nucleon spin, we derive an evolution equation for the quark and gluon orbital angular momenta. The solution of the combined equations yields the asymptotic fractions of the nucleon spin carried by quarks and gluons: 3n f /(16 + 3n f ) and 16/(16 + 3n f ), respectively, where n f is the number of active quark flavors. These are identical to the well-known asymptotic partitions of the nucleon momentum between quark and gluon contributions. We show that the axial-anomaly contribution to the quark helicity is cancelled by a similar contribution to the quark orbital angular momentum, making the total quark contribution to the nucleon spin anomalyfree.

We introduce gauge-invariant quark and gluon angular momentum distributions after making a generalization of the angular momentum density operators. From the quark angular momentum distribution, we define the gauge-invariant and leading-twist quark orbital angular momentum distribution L q (x). The latter can be extracted from data on the polarized and unpolarized quark distributions and the off-forward distribution E(x) in the forward limit. We comment upon the evolution equations obeyed by this as well as other orbital distributions considered in the literature.