Spin Structure of the Nucleon

Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey of the most recent results from the field of quark-gluon structure of the nucleon, in particular how the spin of the nucleon is shared by its constituents. After very intriguing results from CERN and SLAC at the end of the 1980s, the last decade has seen a set of second-generation experiments at high energy accelerators that have yielded precise information on the solution of the 'Spin Crisis' - as well as opening up new questions. The articles are written by experts from the leading collaboration and theory groups as well as providing an expert summary of the state of the art, the book points the way to future research directions. Its main focus is on semi-inclusive and exclusive measurements of deep inelastic lepton scattering, which enables for the first time the determination of the flavor-separated quark spin distributions. Future developments on generalized parton distributions and their interpretation as well as the transverse spin structure are also covered. An indispensable volume for all working in hadronic physics.