The nucleon has been used as a laboratory to investigate its own spin structure and Quantum Chromodynamics. New experimental data on nucleon spin structure at low to intermediate momentum transfers combined with existing high momentum transfer data offer a comprehensive picture of the transition region from the confinement regime of the theory to its asymptotic freedom regime. Insight for some aspects of the theory is gained by exploring lower moments of spin structure functions and their corresponding sum rules (i.e. the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn, Bjorken and Burkhardt-Cottingham). These moments are expressed in terms of an operator product expansion using quark and gluon degrees of freedom at moderately large momentum transfers. The sum rules are verified to a good accuracy assuming that no singular behavior of the structure functions is present at very high excitation energies. The higher twist contributions have been examined through the moments evolution as the momentum transfer varies from higher to lower values. Furthermore, QCD-inspired low energy effective theories, which explicitly include chiral symmetry breaking, are tested at low momentum transfers. The validity of these theories is further examined as the momentum transfer increases to moderate values. It is found that chiral perturbation calculations agree reasonably well with the first moment of the spin structure function g1 at momentum transfer of 0.1 GeV2 but fail to reproduce the neutron data in the case of the generalized polarizability [delta]{sub LT}.

Nucleon structure study is one of the most important research areas in modern physics and has challenged us for decades. Spin has played an essential role and often brought surprises and puzzles to the investigation of the nucleon structure and the strong interaction. New experimental data on nucleon spin structure at low to intermediate momentum transfers combined with existing high momentum transfer data offer a comprehensive picture in the strong region of the interaction and of the transition region from the strong to the asymptotic-free region. Insight for some aspects of the theory for the strong interaction, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), is gained by exploring lower moments of spin structure functions and their corresponding sum rules (i.e. the Bjorken, Burkhardt-Cottingham, Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH), and the generalized GDH). These moments are expressed in terms of an operator-product expansion using quark and gluon degrees of freedom at moderately large momentum transfers.

The history of spin in general, and of the nucleon spin structure in particular, has been full of surprises. For the past 25 years deep inelastic lepton scattering has been studied to determine the carriers of the nucleon spin. However, it was realized only recently that a full understanding of the nucleon spin will also require detailed information on the helicity structure in the resonance region, i.e. in the realm of nonperturbative QCD.This volume gives a status report on the spin structure in the nucleon resonance region, focusing on: new experimental results from SLAC and HERMES; a first glance at the JLab experiments to map out the spin structure functions at low and intermediate four-momentum transfers; the pioneering experiment at MAMI (Mainz) to determine the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule for real photons; and recent theoretical concepts and investigations to describe the spin structure in the frameworks of higher twist expansion, phenomenological models and chiral perturbation theory.

After about three decades of experimental and theoretical efforts, the structure of the nucleon (proton and neutron) is now fairly well understood based on quantum chromodynamics, but only if averaged over its spin. As the recent “proton spin crisis” revealed, we do not understand much about the nucleon structure when its spin is polarized to a specific orientation. We expect that our understanding on this challenging problem will soon be significantly improved by the RHIC-Spin and other experiments in the near future, as well as by the lattice- and perturbative-QCD theoretical calculations. The purpose of this symposium was to summarize the current understanding and discuss the future perspective of this problem with experimental and theoretical physicists from both high-energy and nuclear physics communities.The symposium covered the overview of the structure studies, updates on the experimental results from CERN, SLAC, DESY, FNAL, and KEK, future experiments at RHIC, and recent theoretical developments (18 presentations, 113 participants).

The topic of the internal spin structure of the nucleon has become an unusually active subfield of particle and nuclear physics, together with the relevant technologies. This volume presents up-to-date coverage.All the talks given at the symposium can be found in the volume. In addition, selected articles are reprinted, including two early papers which record initial thinking about the topic, all experimental papers giving data on nucleon spin structure functions determined from polarized lepton-nucleon scattering, and two valuable previously unpublished papers.

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.

From its early beginnings at SLAC in the 1970's, the study of nucleon spin structure using polarized lepton beams and polarized nucleon targets has become increasingly important in nuclear and particle physics, with current experiments at several of the world's high energy and nuclear physics laboratories (CERN, DESY, SLAC and Jefferson Lab) and with enormous related theoretical studies. The understanding of the fascinating but complicated problem of nucleon spin structure has progressed substantially, but fundamental questions remain and it can be confidently predicted that future activity will be high.The Erice Course on The Spin Structure of the Nucleon covered both the experimental and theoretical aspects of the subject, and this volume includes the lectures given at the School. In many cases the lecture material has been extended and updated by the authors. In addition, several recent publications on experimental work have been added in an appendix.