A critical assessment of the angular momentum sum rules

There are now five angular momentum relations or sum rules in the literature: the Jaffe, Manohar relation for a longitudinally polarized nucleon, and the Bakker, Leader, Trueman result for the case of transverse polarization; the Ji relation for longitudinal polarization, and the Leader result for transverse polarization, both involving generalized parton distributions; and a new sum rule due to Ji, Xiong and Yuan dealing with the transverse component of the Pauli-Lubanski vector. I discuss these various relations and examine their precise interpretation in the light of the so-called “angular momentum controversy”. In particular, I show that the claim of Ji, Xiong, Yuan that their Pauli-Lubanski relation is frame or energy independent is incorrect and that they have missed an energy dependent term in their expression.