Quark spin in the proton

The proton spin puzzle has challenged our understanding of QCD for the last 20 years. We survey new developments in theory and experiment. The proton spin puzzle seems to be telling us about the interplay of valence quarks with chiral dynamics and the complex vacuum structure of QCD.Comment: 8 pages, presented at the Conference in Honour of Murray Gell-Mann's 80th Birthday: Quantum Mechanics, Elementary Particles, Quantum Cosmology and Complexity, NTU, Singapore, 24th-26th February 201

Gluon polarization in the proton

We combine heavy-quark renormalization group arguments with our understanding of the nucleon's wavefunction to deduce a bound on the gluon polarization Delta g in the proton. The bound is consistent with the values extracted from spin experiments at COMPASS and RHIC.Comment: 4 page

A polarised QCD condensate: nu p elastic scattering as a probe of U_A(1) dynamics

U_A(1) dynamics have the potential to induce a polarised condensate inside a nucleon. The formation of this condensate is related to the realisation of U_A(1) symmetry breaking by tunneling processes such as instantons. If it is present, the polarised condensate induces a term in g_1 which has support only at x=0. Tunneling processes then induce a net transfer of ``spin'' from finite x to x=0. The polarised condensate may be measured by comparing the flavour-singlet axial charges which are extracted from polarised deep inelastic and nu p elastic scattering experiments.Comment: 13 pages LaTeX, Section 3 improved to include discussion of the 3 flavour quark instanton interaction; to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.