On the relation between the spin and the magnetic moment of the proton

Abstract

In the context of the quark model of hadrons the spin and the magnetic moment of proton can not be taken proportional. This is in contradiction with the widely used relation between these two properties of the proton. This apparent difficulty is addressed by the most elementary notions of the relevant physics. In particular it is emphasized that the widely used relation is only valid in the lowest orders of perturbation, in which transitions between different baryons do not occur. For other processes where such transitions do occur, such as inelastic scattering off the protons, the quark model relation for the magnetic moment is used to give an estimation for the amplitude of transition between states with different total spins.