1995/11/16 by Stefano Forte, Forte, Stefano
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-ph/9511345
20 pages, plain TeX with epsf, 10 figures in compressed postscript. Table 2 updated incorporating a recent correction to the NLO anomalous dimensions of Mertig and van Neerven
arxiv created 1995/11/29 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We review recent developments in the theory and phenomenology of polarized structure functions. We summarize recent experimental data on the proton and deuteron structure function g1, and their impact on the understanding of polarized sum rules. Specifically, we discuss how accurate measurements of the singlet and nonsinglet first moment of g1 test perturbative and nonperturbative QCD, and critically examine the way these measurements are arrived at. We then discuss how the extraction of structure functions from the data can be improved by means of a theoretical analysis of their x and Q2 dependence, and how, conversely, experimental information on this dependence can be used to pin down the polarized parton content of the nucleon.