Spin Dependent Quark Forces and the Spin Content of the Nucleon

The spin crisis of the nucleon is that the quark spin contribution is only a small fraction of the nucleon spin. A relativistic Dirac equation approach is followed assuming three low mass current quarks in the nucleon described by a (1/2 + ) 3 configuration. If the lower component contribution to the normalization of the quark wave function is about 0.18, then the axial charge of the nucleon can be reproduced. However including the same lower component to every quark wave function is not enough to resolve the spin crisis. The net u quark spin z component is predicted as 1.0 and the net d quark spin z component is predicted as −0.25, both in disagreement with experiment. These predictions can be brought into agreement with experiment if flavor independent but spin dependent forces are assumed between the quarks. The strength of the spin dependent force found by empirically fitting the nucleon spin data is shown to be comparable to the spin dependence that can explain the Δ-nucleon mass difference. The spin content of the Δ + is then predicted using the interactions that reproduce the spin content of the proton.